I haven’t met a Katherine Center book that I haven’t adored. I love that you are always promised a happy ending and some fun along the way. Hello Stranger is no exception. I have a friend with facial blindness so it was nice to see a book explore this topic. I enjoyed the storyline, the best friend, the (obvious but fun) mystery and the medical conflict. Thanks for another delightful rom com!

Katherine Center is edging her way into being one of my favorite authors. Hello Stranger centers around Sadie a portraitist just about to enter a career- changing endeavor. Suddenly, she collapses on the street and wakes up in the hospital realizing she has a rare brain malfunction that makes her unable to recognize the faces of people. The story unfolds as she tries to maintain her career, which is very difficult not being able to see faces, and is falling for her neighbor and her veterinarian.

I highly recommend Hello Stranger to people who love a good story with elements of romance, self development, and a fun twist.

I really enjoyed this!!
My first Katherine Center book. 🙂

-single pov
-likable and (very dislikable characters - I’m looking at you Parker. You suck)
-quick listen!

This book was easy to digest and had a great story line. I thought it was super unique and I learned more about face blindness. I didn't even know that was a thing!!! I loved how the ending all came together w/ our main characters.

Loved the audiobook. I thought it was great!!
Without giving too much away, this book does deal with medical issues so if that’s an issue for you please look up TWs.

Can't wait to read more books by this author!

Katherine Center is becoming a must read author for me! I loved Hello, Stranger! A little bit of a rom com, with some laugh out loud moments, but a lot of heart and love. Definitely recommend!!!

Hello Stranger is my 2nd read by Katherine Center. I enjoyed The Bodyguard and had a feeling this one would be a winner as well and it definitely was. Center has a way of writing unique, but highly relatable characters that you find yourself loving and rooting for like a best friend. In Hello Stranger we meet Sadie Montgomery who is a struggling portrait artist who suddenly finds herself diagnosed with face blindness at a promising point in her career and while falling in love with two different men.

Read if you love:
Swoon-worthy Romance
Funny Side Characters
Evil Stepsister Antagonists
Love Triangles
Adorable Dogs with Impeccable Taste in Food

If you're a Katherine Center fan then you are going to absolutely love this one. If you're new to her books, but love a romcom with substance and laugh out loud humor then you're in for a real treat & will find yourself immediately picking up more of her work.

🎬 Also check out Katherine Center's Happiness For Beginners on @Netflix It was super sweet! 🥰

A special thank you to the author, NetGalley and St Martins Press Romance for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

From the author of THINGS YOU SAVE IN A FIRE and WHAT YOU WISH FOR comes the newest sweet romance story. The characters felt real, particularly Sadie the struggling artist. I do think she fell into some typical tropes I don't really enjoy (i.e. this girl is struggling and needs saving!) There were some interesting aspects like the surgery storyline, the stuff about family, etc. which i did enjoy but made this feel less like a romance. Overall, it was well written and interesting, but not my favorite of hers and definitely not a classic romance.

Katherine Center books are always such a breath of fresh air. They will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy by the end, but are not complete fluff, in that you oftentimes have to fight through some fairly emotional, tough stuff to get there. This book was no different. I loved it very much.

First off, don't the let the far-fetched synopsis about a woman with face blindness keep you from reading. It does seem a bit crazy at first (though prosopagnosia is indeed a real thing), but makes for a very entertaining and endearing read. I felt so much for the heroine of this book, and loved seeing how things turned out for her.

If you are looking for a great contemporary, unique, rom-com read, please pick this one up! I don't think you'll be disappointed. <3

I definitely didn't love this one as much as I enjoyed The Bodyguard, but it was still a good read. The book was very engaging, but there was just a lot going on.

Very sweet and charming romance that offers some unexpected developments that make me want to go back and reread from the beginning. Some readers may catch on sooner to a major surprise in the romance. I was pretty clueless though, but also pleasantly surprised by the crafty plotting of this book.


Sadie is an up-and-coming portrait artist who suffers a health episode in the opening chapter from a neurological birth defect. She has a successful brain surgery but is left with a slow healing process that leaves her unable to distinguish facial features. This aspect is well handled and provides for plenty of emotional moments, both sad and humorous, as Sadie attempts to adjust to her new normal. I do think the plot here is a little too on the nose since Sadie is a portraitist and is competing in a potentially life-changing competition at exactly the moment when she collapses and can no longer see people's distinct facial features. Setting that detail aside, I did enjoy her coping mechanisms, and I really enjoyed her attempts to date two different men simultaneously given that she cannot see their faces. I'm pretty sure I would lay low in such an event rather than decide, hey, now is a good time to hit the dating scene. But, this is a romantic comedy, and so we watch Sadie date faceless men and navigate feelings that she may not be able to trust given the challenges she encounters.

While I enjoyed the romance/s, I rather less enjoyed Sadie's family drama - including her neglectful father, her difficult stepmother, her diabolical stepsister. I think mainly I did not really like these parts of the story because Sadie was diminished by them. She is supposedly nearly 30 but still using her father's credit card to shop, and still squabbling with her stepsister over which child is more loved in the family. She felt a bit childish to me and I found the book maybe more new adult than I expected.

Still, the ending so caught me off guard that I forgot my earlier criticism. This book definitely ends on a high note. I have a hit and miss relationship with this author but do want to read more from her.

Anything Katherine Center writes, I will read. Hello Stranger is inventive, quirky and heartwarming! The book could be summed up in its final line: "The more good things you look for, the more you find." The FMC character development was amazing. I do think the MMC was a bit of a manic-pixie-dream girl though. The best part of this book though was the Author's Note at the end - I teared up!

This is the most amazing novel I've ever read!!!!!! This in my opinion is Katherine Center's best novel yet.

“Maybe five years ago, I was listening to a radio show called ‘This American Life,’ and they did a Valentine’s Day issue where they were doing a bunch of little love stories in the episode,” began New York Times bestselling author Katherine Center in an interview with The Michigan Daily. “One of the stories was about a woman who had fallen in love with a guy who had face blindness — and one of the things that stuck with me about it was this idea that she loved the way he looked at her … that story in that radio show did not end happily — they did not stay together — but there’s always this part of me that hears unhappy love stories and wants to fix them. And so I just held onto it.”

This was the inspiration for her upcoming novel “Hello Stranger.”

Sadie, the protagonist of “Hello Stranger,” finds herself victim to a tragic accident early on in the book that leads to her suffering from face blindness. She’s no longer able to put individual facial features together in a full picture and, as a result, can’t recognize her friends and can’t see the faces of new people she’s meeting. And because she’s adamant about not explaining the situation beyond those closest to her, there’s bound to be some miscommunication and conflict.


The biggest conflict in the book presents itself as Sadie wrestles between two figures in her life romantically — Joe, the guy next door who makes a bad first impression but makes up for it, and Dr. Oliver Addison, the handsome and charming vet who she takes her sick dog to for help. Love triangles are difficult to navigate on a good day — but when you can’t even recognize the guys in your life, that makes things a bit more difficult.

There are questions that come with this kind of a love story, Center explained. “What is it that we fall in love with when we fall in love with people? Do you need to see someone’s face? How do you love somebody? If you can’t see them the way that you’re used to seeing them … what is it? How does it all work?”

Because Sadie is dealing with these deep, personal issues while also trying to find love, Center successfully navigates two genres with her book, making the characters more nuanced and the story as a whole more meaningful. The romance in “Hello Stranger” is, to use Center’s word, “swoony,” but watching Sadie personally grow throughout the course of the novel is just as riveting. She endures a trauma early on that impacts the rest of the novel and informs all of her decisions, opinions and feelings. It makes her a more realistic character — someone to root for. A person in her own right, not solely characterized by the romance in her life.

“I think of myself as writing sort of half women’s fiction and half romance,” said Center. “The part where there’s struggle like Sadie’s … that’s more women’s fiction. It’s about personal growth … finding it, figuring out who you are and what really matters. Those are big, deep life questions … And then 50% love story … That’s the enjoyable part. That is the part, as a reader, that lights my particular fire … that sense of longing, that sense of anticipation, that anticipatory joy as you think about that happy ending that you’re moving towards and can’t wait to get there. That’s why I come back to them over and over and over again.”

These dual-genre books that Center loves to read and write make for some of the most well-crafted contemporary novels of the day. Traditional romance novels have been frowned upon and looked down upon for a long time because people assume them to be one-note, but some of the most successful, interesting novels of recent history have proven otherwise. Not only is it possible to write a book that features characters that have their own, significant stories alongside their romantic subplots, it’s actually happening — and happening a lot.


BookTok, for instance, has been a vehicle for the increased interest and respect for these novels. Seeing fellow readers unapologetically laud romantic stories and highlight and sticky note their favorite parts (in pastel, aesthetically pleasing color coordination, to boot) has made others feel freer to express their opinions on books.

“Books like romance … have traditionally been, in my opinion, quite tragically pooh-poohed by the literary world,” said Center. “You weren’t going to get reviewed in the New York Times writing romance. Those gatekeepers don’t really exist on BookTok, they don’t really exist on Instagram. If you love a book, you just get on there, and you post about it, and you talk about what you loved. You’re not waiting for some old guy to let you through and read about your book.”

“Hello Stranger” has already begun to make a splash on BookTok and Bookstagram — just like her last book, “The Bodyguard,” and a big part of that is because of how wonderfully she balances those two genres that mean so much to her — and her readers.

With its emphasis on its central character, combined with its “swoony” romance, “Hello Stranger” is a hit. Sadie is everything you could want in a protagonist — the right amount of quirky, sunshiney and stubborn, and the men she’s in love with are equally fascinating. All the side characters provide humor and comfort, and even those characters who you aren’t really supposed to like are annoyingly intriguing and captivating. Center created a brilliant cast of characters, set to a plot that’s sure to keep you reading.

“I believe very strongly in this sort of psychological concept of post-traumatic growth — that the hard things that happen to you in life will … inevitably change you. You can be stronger and better on the other side.”

Sadie comes out stronger on the other side, and watching her journey is nothing short of inspirational.

Daily Arts Writer Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.

This was beyond cute, but a little sad at times. I loved the relationship that grew between Sadie and Joe. They were friends and it blossomed into a wonderful love to write home about, solely based on interactions, conversations, and body language. Too bad it didn't work out with the Veterinarian lol. The book was easy to read, kept me engaged, and made me feel all the feels. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this free review copy!

I enjoyed Katherine Center's previous book, The Bodyguard, so I was so excited for this one! The characters were wonderful and relatable, and I couldn't help but root for Sadie. Watching her love story with Joe unfold was delightful, and I also learned some new things about propagnosia (face blindness).

This is a perfect blend of messy family dynamics, sweet romance, and hilarious moments sprinkled in!

I love the story lines that Katherine Center produces and that it's not just the typical reasons behind the tropes. I did find it quite obvious it was the same person throughout- not sure if that was supposed to be a big aha moment, but I still was sucked in to see how it would end up.

I'm slowly making my way through Center's backlist. This book had a great twist that was unlike anything I'd imagined. Of course, I figured it out about 45% of the way through the book, but I am ok with that!

I really enjoyed Hello Stranger! This is my second Katherine Center novel and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll admit the beginning was a little slow going for me but after about 50 pages I was hooked. I really enjoyed getting to know Sadie and Joe (and Peanut!) along with the supporting cast and it opened my eyes to new challenges I’d never really given much thought to!

This unfortunately was not my favorite Katherine Center novel. I found it quite boring and predictable (and yes I do understand all romance novels are predictable by nature). The upsides were that there were some interesting parts- reading about Sadie's condition and face blindness was something I did not know much about before. And I adored the people Sadie had in her corner! Overall, Sadie herself was not a character I could connect with.

This was a cute and fun read!

Loved the bit so typical story plot and the little twist. It took me a minute to figure it out but once I did it was like… 💡

Overall, definitely recommend this. It’s a light and easy ready and keeps you interested.

Katherine Center does it again!! A “hallmark” feel good story, but was such a uniquely genuine turn of events (who know about face blindness?!), she always brings such a special depth and humanity to her characters.

I loved reading this book and experiencing the FMC emotions, while also finding myself laughing out loud at the hilarity of so many scenarios. Center also masters witty/goofy banter that is just such a joy to read!