Katherine Center did not disappoint me! Another great book from her! I would definitely recommend this book! I will read the books from he that I have missed and definitely look out for new ones! Such a great author!

This was a fast and ENJOYABLE read. I love the story and her other books did not disappoint either. I always look forward to reading her books. Definitely will recommend

Hello Stranger was fantastic - probably my favorite Katherine Center novel so far. I feel in love with the characters, laughed out loud, evens cried a little. The ending tied the entire story up perfectly and made me so happy.

Sadie is a “starving artist” that just made it to the top 10 in an artist contest that could potentially grant her $10,000 if she wins.

That is until she has a seizure in the road and received brain surgery and can no longer distinguish faces… which is challenging for someone who needs to win a portrait contest.

This book was a little slow for my liking and the chapters were very long. This book took me a long time to get through due to those reasons alone. I stopped and started this book multiple times.

The main character was annoyingly stubborn and made me so mad at her “don’t help me!” attitude.

The sweet ending made this book bump up from a 2 star to a 3 star.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the chance to read this ARC.

Giving this one 3.5, but rounding up to 4 stars!
Katherine Center is new to me, while I loved the BodyGuard by her, this one was pretty predictable but sweet. I enjoyed the storyline, and I couldn’t imagine loosing my ability to see faces. I’m going to have to pick up some of her other books, because I truly enjoy her writing and would recommend this and the bodyguard to anyone!

I have a feeling Hello Stranger is going to be huge on booksta this summer, and I’m very curious as to how people will feel about it, as the book proved to be very polarizing in the buddy read group chat.

To be frank, I didn’t love the story. It’s cartoonish, over the top, and silly in a way I didn’t find enjoyable, and there were multiple times I found myself yelling “That doesn’t make any sense!” at my Kindle.

However, I think there is still a lot to love about this book, and do believe that hardcore fans of Katherine Center’s will enjoy it. I liked the messages about how important small acts of kindness can be and how one good deed can set off a positive chain reaction. I also loved how the story spoke to how pets (namely dogs) can play massive roles in our lives. Oh, and did I mention the beautiful cover? It’s stunning!

This was my first experience reading something by Center and while I can’t say I loved this book, I did like her writing style and am eager to try something else by her.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great book and i loved it! I could not put it down. This was such an interesting concept to read and think about. Girl has routine surgery then experiences face blindness as a side effect, oh and she’s also a portrait painter. I was fascinated yet this seemed utterly impossible. Sadie thought so too and she was ready to give up before she started but although she was a Pro at procrastinating she does persevere and finish her portrait for the show while also pursuing two new love interests. One, an almost too helpful goofball, the other a sexy Veterinarian who saves her precious dog. But Sadie will learn these two are not what they seem. I loved that part, I didn’t even know it was going to take a turn like that! But I absolutely loved everything about this book.

Thank you netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a feel good romance that made me smile.

Read if you like
- relatable characters
- love triangles
-to laugh

4/5 ⭐

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for sharing this ARC!

Hello Stranger is the story of Sadie Montgomery, a struggling artist who wants nothing more than to win the prestigious art award she's been working toward most of her adult life. Her whole world turns upside down when as a results of an unknown medical issue, Sadie finds herself requiring surgery which alters her entire existence as she knows it. What follows is Sadie's path to acceptance and understanding of her new condition, and how asking and needing help is something that everyone can relate to.

I loved Katherine Center's last book The Bodyguard and I can't help but feel like I wanted MORE from this book. More Joe....more Dr. Oliver...more of everything! The "twist" is obvious from the beginning, but I did feel like the build-up was satisfying. I was on the edge of my seat several times wondering if this would be the moment that Sadie "came to her senses". I also felt like the ending wrapped up too easily, and there was a whole scene that I felt was unnecessary and only served to "tell" other characters the entire last half of the book.

The one piece that lacked for me was the inclusion of Sadie's family, who were just awful. In this day and age I can't imagine someone who has been treated so negatively by her family would be so open to a relationship with them.

That being said, this really is a cute rom com that does have elements that any romance reader would enjoy!

Katherine Center really knows how to write a good book. Of all the books of hers that I've read, I don't think I've ever been disappointed. This book was no exception. This book also reminded me of some of Lisa Genova's books, but I think that's mainly due to the fact it's got brain related things happening. The characters were well written and they felt real, not in the way that I felt like I knew them, but in the way where I felt like they were a character on a show I've been watching for a while. The story itself was interesting and well paced. I learned a lot about face blindness (not that I really knew anything before, and what I thought I knew turned out to be false), which was fun. I loved Peanut. I love a good dog in a book. I laughed, I cried, I got incredibly angry (I'm looking at you, Parker), and I enjoyed every second. This was a quick and enjoyable read, and I'd definitely recommend it. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC!

Hello Stranger is the fifth book by Katherine Center that I’ve read, and it’s definitely my favorite!

Was this book predictable? Yes. Did I care? Not 👏🏻 at 👏🏻 all 👏🏻 As the author’s not at the end of the book says, it’s the ~anticipation~ that matters, and this book had a lot of it.

I loved seeing all of Sadie’s relationships change. I loved her cute little dog. I loved the exploration of art as healing, and highly related to Sadie trying to create while not at her best. Also, can we get a round of applause for Joe please?? The man is definitely book boyfriend material.

The only thing I didn’t love was how long it took Sadie to open up about her face blindness. It led to some slightly frustrating miscommunication. However, the resolution felt realistic, and that really made the end of the book sparkle.

Katherine Center never misses, and this is no exception.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

My review on Instagram will be posted two weeks before publication day.

I never heard of facial blindness before so this was interesting to me. Add in that she is a portrait artist was a big twist. How could she make her art and support herself? The ways she adapts and changes is fascinating. Her family is not a support system but she has friends that are. This story was a good one that I enjoyed.

Katherine Center is an author I just found this past year and have devoured all her books. I was so pleased to receive this ARC!
It took me a bit to get into the story and I don’t think I ever fully did get into it. I still enjoyed it. I love the way Katherine writes and tells her stories. I’m not a fan of love triangles, so maybe that’s what kept me blocked. Is reader’s block a thing? But like I said, even with the love triangle, I still liked the story and most of the characters.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, St. Martins Press for this ARC. ~I was given this book and made no commitments to leave my opinions, favorable or otherwise~

I’ve been a fan of Katherine Center’s books for awhile now and have read three previous titles. I enjoyed this story and the characters especially Joe and Sadie. I found it a bit hard to believe her facial blindness condition would be so easy for her to hide but realize it had to be that way for the plot to work. Overall an enjoyable, easy read with thought provoking storylines that had a good bit of depth to them.

Katherine Center is an automatic buy for me so to receive this ARC was SO exciting! Hello stranger covered one of my favorite and most fascinating topics as a mental health professional and that is prosopagnosia, or face blindness. The romance and love triangle is SO fun. Usually I am not a huge love triangle fan but just trust me on this one. Watching the main character learn what she deserves, who she is as an artist, and who she is as a friend/partner is extremely enjoyable! Highly recommend the book, it is lighthearted but also touches serious topics. Personally I could not put the book down!

Do you know the moments before waking up from a dream that is warm and cozy and familiar? As odd as it sounds, that is how HELLO STRANGER felt to me. I fell in love with Sadie immediately, loving her and knowing her from the first page. I love Joe, I loved the Kim family - and I don’t throw this word around lightly. It was as though I knew them already, and I think it’s because Center write this so perfectly that I felt the world as Sadie did. This book is a master class in romance.

⭐️ 4.0/5.0 – A sweet-as-sugar, but yet surprisingly grounding experience.
🌶️ 1.5/5.0 – Innocent, but also sort of behind closed doors? One making out on the bed scene that gets interrupted. More is somewhat implied, but never shown.

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center definitely took me by surprise, and in a good way! I received this book as an ARC via NetGalley, so thank you to them and to the publisher. I tend to read 🌶️spicy🌶️ romance novels, with the added bonus being that they’re better at sucking me in and keeping my attention. Knowing that this book wasn’t as attention-grabbing in that sense made me continuously pushing off this read in favour of others in my TBR.

That said, once I got hooked by the story, the read went by pretty quickly! I finished the bulk of Hello Stranger within the last 24 hours or so, and that was still taking it at quite a leisurely pace. I realized the big plot twist fairly early on, which is to be expected with this book. It’s a twist hidden from the characters themselves, but heavily hinted at to the reader. I didn’t really connect with Joe a whole lot, but as a disabled person, I did connect with Sadie a lot more than expected. Her growth on the idea of “just quitting” and of adapting to her disability definitely struck a chord with me.

The idea misted me with relief. I didn’t have to just endlessly suffer and suffer and suffer.
I could just . . . quit.

As an autistic person, I also heavily related to this sentiment shared by Sadie about scripting a response ahead of time. This is something I often do in my personal life, and obviously to a much greater frequency, but it was still nice to see a piece of my reality reflected on page.

Before the party, I’d come up with a throwdown phrase in case I started to panic, and it went like this: “Help me out here. I have a facial recognition problem. Have we met before?

Sadie’s step-sister Parker is one of the characters that I feel got too much story-time and that she was too over the top. She was about as cliché as the evil step-sisters from Cinderella. In the case of this book, I do think that it mostly worked though. Parker did serve a purpose to the story and the message of the story, but the character as a whole just wasn’t my cup of tea.

“You know those children who try to trap ground squirrels so they can torture them?”
“I guess so?”
“That’s her. And I’m the ground squirrel.”

I do give Katherine Center a ton of praise for the Author’s Note at the end of the book, after the epilogue. Center writes about predictability in romance novels, and the predictability—though she explains that anticipation is her preferred way of phrasing it—is what draws us to romance as a genre. I had never thought about the psychology of it before. I only really started to actually read once I discovered romance. For the first time, I actually wanted to read as opposed to feeling like I “should”. I know that I’m going to get a happily ever after, but at the same time I know that the two main characters will have to face some hardships before that HEA comes to them. I really recommend reading this section of the book though, even if you normally wouldn’t. It was like a breath of fresh air and it even shed a new, more positive, light for me on some of the aspects of the book that I wasn't as big of a fan of.

The point is,” Dr. Nicole said, “you’re still adjusting. You have to allow for confirmation bias.”
“What’s confirmation bias?”
Dr. Nicole paused for a good definition. “It means that we tend to think what we think we’re going to think.”

I think that maybe, like Sadie, my confirmation bias affected my views of this book while reading. I rarely read the sweet, corny romances, where everything just seems to perfectly work out, personalities are larger than life, and the plot points can only be described as “Yeah, that wouldn’t happen in real life”. So, while I read, I ‘poopooed’ the story’s plot points as my confirmation bias attempted to confirm to me that the sweet-as-sugar romance novels are just predictable and have have poor story structure. I’m not saying that this book has objectively or even subjectively poor structure, because I don’t think that it does. But, as Katherine Center points out, the predictability of knowing that, in the end, any loose ends will be cleanly tied up and that justice will be served to those deserving of it, allows us to bask in that oxytocin. “Love is healing. It’s unapologetically optimistic.” she says.

Before reading this book, would I have preferred a slightly longer romance with a bit more character and story depth, some moral ambiguity, and a boatload of spice? Absolutely. But now? I’m glad I read this ARC. Not only did I learn a lot about Prosopagnosia, but I just got to enjoy Sadie and Joe/Oliver falling in love and the happy conclusion of Sadie’s Prosopagnosia improving and the growth of both characters throughout the book. The inclusion of Prosopagnosia in this book was clearly done with a lot of care as well, and as someone who is physically and developmentally disabled, I really appreciate the research that Katherine Center did, as she outlines at the end of the book in the acknowledgements and the section “A Note on Prosopagnosia”.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to not be able to distinguish people by seeing their faces? How many visual cues do we get day-to-day from seeing the reactions on people’s faces? In this book Sadie, a portrait artist who recently qualified as a finalist in a prestigious contest, develops this condition and is trying to navigate her career, her family dynamics, and romantic relationships. Will she be won the contest? Will she ever be able to see people’s faces again?

What made me pick this one up? I have enjoyed Katherine Center’s books since picking up ‘Things You Save in a Fire” and this is another homerun!

Did it live up to my expectations? It exceeded my expectations - it was well written, and I couldn’t put this book down! After I finished, I even spent time researching face blindness - this book is going to stay with me for a long time.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I adore Katherine Center’s books, and this one was a cute, fast, and fun read. I flew through it in a day; could not put it down. I liked that it was predictable but also kept you guessing at times (a little). It was a creative take on the meet-cute and I appreciate that. Also dogs.

Loved this novel about a portrait artist who suffers from face blindness. Throw in a tumultuous life, a precarious living situation, a less than stellar father, an evil stepsister and a few cute men and you have a good novel.