This book was my introduction to Katherine Center and I have been binging her books since!

I have fallen in love with her characters over and over - they are incredibly relatable and I genuinely feel like I'm friends with them by the end of the book.

Hello Stranger is funny, romantic, dramatic and has well developed central and supporting characters. The twists and unexpected turns stole my heart here.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to listen, review and discover a new favorite!

I loved the premise of this book! It was really cute. It didn't capture me as much as I would have liked, but it was a cute romance!

I loved the narrator! She did a great job giving a lot of emotion and the voices she used for each character matched very well! She was a perfect fit and I felt every emotion when she was upset or excited!
Only issue was that some lines from the book didn’t match up with the audio. Some lines were out of order, some describing words were completely different and some were just missing from the audio.

How would your life change if one day you woke up and couldn't see? Sadie suddenly finds herself living in a world with no faces. Sure, she could see... just not faces. As an aspiring artist, she begins to navigate life through what she hopes will just be a temporary minor inconvenience.

This love story really created fantastic anticipation. (Iykyk) Hello stranger is jammed packed with all the favorite things: family drama, falling in love, best friends, and overcoming trials. The twists and turns kept me grasping for more and more, then wrapped up by the perfect grand finale!

Read if you like: love triangles, evil step-families, aspiring artists, characters you can fall in love with, and overcoming challenges.

✨Hello Stranger by Katherine Center is definitely a 5 star read I highly recommend!

📚Sadie is an artist and recently placed as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition. This is what Sadie has been waiting for her whole life - validation that her art is good and a worthwhile endeavor. More so, she hopes this will final garner the respect she craves from her father who is well known in the medical field and held aspirations of her following in his footsteps.

Sadie’s life is literally fractured when an accident lands her in the hospital wherein she learns she has a genetic condition that must be dealt with immediately through brain surgery. While hesitant, her well connected father pulls strings to make the surgery happen. When Sadie comes out of surgery, she finds she is able to recognize voices but not faces. Her brain is unable to piece together faces and instead, she is only able to focus on one facial feature at a time - she is diagnosed with temporary face blindness. Sadie is devastated at the news considering she’s supposed to compete in a portrait contest within the next few weeks. Not only that, the world around Sadie no longer feels safe - how to you interact in a world where you no longer recognize those you know, let alone strangers.

To make matters worse, Sadie’s beloved companion - her 14 year old foodie-of-a-dog - Peanut is sick and must be rushed to the vet. At the vet, Sadie instantly falls in love with Dr Oliver Addison, the vet who is on-call and saves Peanut’s life.
Back at her apartment, she bumps into Joe whom she’s written off as a horrible person and womanizer. But when he starts being kind to Sadie and she realizes he’s actually a chronic do-gooder, she begins to fall for him too.

✨This book had so much and I loved every minute of it! Sadie is such an amazingly strong, determined, and brave character - she deals with face blindness and adapting to the new world this creates for her all the while preparing for a portrait competition, falling for two men, avoiding an evil step-mother and step-sister, and trying to make her father proud. This book was not only entertaining, it was heartwarming, informative, and charming in all the ways that matter to me!
Thank you to NetGalley, Katherine Center, and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook ahead of the proposed July 11th, 2023 release date in exchange for honest feedback. It was an honor and Katherine Center has been added to my list of author’s to binge-read!

When Sadie Montgomery, a portrait artist, comes out of brain surgery with face blindness that is hopefully temporary, her whole world is turned upside down. As Sadie struggles to find her way through this new world in a sea of empty faces, she is forced to look at her life and everything she’s known and try to find a new path through it.

I have loved every Katherine Center romance I have read and this one was no different. I absolutely loved how this book progressed and couldn’t get over how perfect the end was. There was nothing about this book that I can critique, it was perfect and just what I needed to read right now! It also made me think about how different life would be if I turned up with hopefully temporary face blindness, this would throw a whole new curve into life as I know it and I’m not sure how I would handle it. I loved how this book explored how much we have come to rely on certain aspects of our lives, like seeing faces, and how if is complicated to start seeing people in a different way. We rely so heavily on faces to determine who a person is, but as Sadie is forced to see, it is hard to start recognizing people without faces because everything else is so easily changed, like clothes or hairstyles. Anyway, this was a great romance and I can’t wait to see what comes next from this author!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC audiobook of this book! The narration was excellent as well.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this early!This was so good! This is about a portrait artist named Sadie. She has a medical event that lands her in the hospital and when she wake up she is suffering from face blindness. She can see just fine, but the part of her brain that analyzes faces is damaged so all faces look pixelated and oddly Picasso- esque. Thankfully, she can still see the face of her little dog. Anywho, she's about to be in this huge art contest where she needs to submit a portrait, but now she can't see anyone's face so doing said portrait feels impossible. She has a crush on her vet, a budding friendship with her seemingly womanizing neighbor, an evil stepsister and a dad who blames her for her mothers death. This book had a great amount of depth and humor. I read it at a time where I just needed something light and fun and this fit the bill. I couldn't wait to pick it back up when I put it down and the "twist" at the end actually caught me off guard (granted I wasn't trying to think things through at all during the reading experience). The main character wasn't my all time favorite, but she was endearing enough. Cute!

I absolutely love how Katherine represents MC with a medical condition or life changing situation.

This was a little of a slow burn for me. However, this picked up pace and not only made my heart happy. The end authors note touched me. Her chat about romance books being called predictable, that they are more of an anticipation of a happy ending of a love story. I really enjoyed that!

So with that said, this was as expected l, an anticipated happy ending love story with quirky characters and laughable moments as well.

This was a touching story and once again a meaningful one of how love sees all, through all difficulties.

Narrator was great with different characters. I adore a Narrator that clearly has a different male to female transition between characters.

Thank you @netgalley and @Macmillan Audio for this early releasw audio book.

While this didn't end up being my favorite Katherine Center book, I still really enjoyed it with it's unique premise even if you knew where it was headed it was still fun to see how it was going to play out.

A perfect read for a beach vacation or honestly any day you just need to escape.

I listened to the audio and thought that the narrator did a great job and would recommend the audio to others.

I am DNFing this book after the ugly fatphobic conversation the main character overhears from a character who will clearly be her love interest. I’ve skimmed the rest and have learned that he’s talking about a dog, but Center should respect her readers more than to include this ugliness. Her last book was so unpleasant for me that I feel like this is a sign to stop now.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

I loved this book so much !
After an accident, Sadie cannot see the faces. But she’s an artist and paint portrait! She became friend with Joe her neighbor she hates, and the love story begins.
Such a great story.
This audio makes me want to listen to more audio book. The narrator was great.

What a lovely heartwarming story! Katherine center delivers yet again with her latest novel.

When Sadie has a seizure, she is saved from being hit by a car, by a complete stranger. When she wakes up in the hospital, she is warned that she has a cavernoma, a malformed blood vessel that will require surgery, and soon. But Sadie has just learned that she is a finalist in a very prestigious art competition, for which she must paint a brand-new portrait in the next 6 weeks. What could go wrong?

When Sadie wakes from the surgery, she slowly realizes she has face-blindness - an inability to see faces as complete objects rather than just their constituent pieces. As she makes her living as a portrait painter, this is disastrous. It may or may not be temporary, so she struggles to find a way to produce a portrait for the competition. Her friend Sue helps, until she leaves for her wedding, at which point Sadie's friendly neighbor Joe agrees to help.

Meanwhile, when her dog gets sick, she starts to fall for the vet that treated her pet. Unable to read faces, she begins to rely on her other senses, and realizes the growing attraction between vet Dr. Oliver and herself is mutual. But she's also starting to fall for Joe too...

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a wonderful job of keeping the characters distinct, and giving the proper feeling to the story.

Great characters, wonderful plot and a twist that I didn't 'see' coming (pun intended), all in all this was a great read.

This was one of the most interesting love stories I’ve ever read. I enjoyed the banter between the main character and love interest as well as with the side characters. Such an interesting premise with the facial recognition breakdown. My favorite Katherine Center book so far!

I just adored this book!

Sadie Montgomery is a portrait artist who is just reveling in the fact she made the top ten finalists for a prestigious art competition for portrait artists. However, quickly after she finds out she needs brain surgery due to some neurological issues.

I will say I spent the last year undergoing testing for my own neurological issues and while she does express fear/anxiety I almost feel it’s underplayed as I can confirm—it’s fucking scary.

Anyway, Sadie’s brain surgery is successful, however, it has left her with facial blindness that her doctor says is “probably temporary.” Which as you can imagine as a portrait artist (and human being) is horrifying.

The plot from there is very easy to see where it’s going with her two romantic interests: her dogs cute (she thinks) veterinarian and Joe from her apartment building but it doesn’t make it any less fun or enjoyable! A really fun and sweet read.

I felt the narrator did a good job and was a good choice for this title.

5/5 stars

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for an Audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely devoured this book! I’m a huge Katherine Center fan (I’ve read The Bodyguard like 5 times by now), and I’ve been waiting so long for Hello Stranger!

Honestly, I had huge expectations for this book, huge. And after reading it? Katherine kinda became my favorite author of all time!

I genuinely can not express how much I’ve loved this book. I just can’t stop thinking about it! I had the pleasure to listen to this as an audiobook but I can not wait for the physical copies, definitely going to buy it so I can highlight my favorite passages (there were so many!).

It’s been a while since I’ve read something that REALLY hooked me up. But this book? I was into this from the start, ended up reading way too fast, and finished in two days and now I totally miss the characters.

This book is so freaking good! I laughed, cried (I certainly cried way more than I thought I would), wanted to throw my book against the wall so many times (sadly my book was really my phone so…), and fully swooned over the romance. Where can I find a guy like Joe in real life?

This was an instant favorite and I can’t wait to buy my physical copy!

This was another fun read and it was nice trying to get a more understanding of the medical side of the story and the MC trying to figure it out in the midst of the ups and downs.

Ohhhh Katherine Center 🥰 Can we be friends? I lovvve Katherine’s writing so so so much. The way she incorporates depth, but also a lightness to her characters is something I just adore in her novels. I adored this book and loved the plot of this one too. I was also completely fascinated by the face blindness and I felt all of Sadie’s struggles that came with it. The romance storyline was predictable for me, but I totally enjoyed the ride still. I laughed, I swooned, I loved and I recommend it to you!

Sadie is an artist. She is on her way to the store when she has a stroke and ends up in the hospital. She has something in her brain which causes her to have brain surgery. Once she comes out of surgery she can’t recognize faces. She has face blindness and needs to learn to cope until hopefully the face blindness goes away. She is competing in a portrait art contest, how can she do that with face blindness? Can she paint a portrait without being able to distinguish parts of a face?
Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan audio for an ARC audiobook. The narrator did a great job telling the story with voices and expressions. I enjoyed this book. I like Sadie’s character. She’s a starving artist but following her dreams. Sadie doesn’t like to accept help, but in the duration of the novel she grows and finally excepts help. She also learns to look at faces differently. I like how it’s a romance but the book doesn’t just focus on that, it’s about finding love when you are not looking for it. I loved how everything came together in the end. I enjoyed this book more than the bodyguard!

This is a story about hope, forgiveness and love. The characters are relatable and enjoyable. I didn’t want to put this book down. I was anticipating the plot twist and couldn’t wait for it to happen. Don’t skip the authors note.

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH NETGALLEY AND MACMILLAN AUDIO FOR THIS INCREDIBLE AUDIO ARC!

In case the all caps above wasn’t clear:::
I loved this story. It was the gooey inside of a cinnamon roll, a hug from a friend you haven’t seen in years, and the moment your hear “I love you” from a child for the first time. I knew about one aspect of facial dysphoria. I had no clue about the kind that affects our leading lady, Sadie.

Patti Murin was wonderful. Her performance was the cherry on top of this sundae story! I’m off to buy some flowers and a puppy to name Peanut!