I’m of the firm opinion that the reader’s state of mind affects their enjoyment of a book. So in this context, I think I need to re-read this book at some other time and re-assess my reaction. At the moment, I felt that this book was more depressing than funny. There were some brilliant parts, a few moments in which I felt the humor, but for me it was mostly sad.

I saw Sadie as a woman failing at her life and her career. She was stubbornly clinging to the “I’m fine” fantasy, in spite of having a ruined relation with her father, a not very successful career in art portraiture, living in a crappy studio on the roof of a building, and with more debts than income. She wasn’t all that cheerful, she was just faking it as best she could, and most of the time I thought she was too deluded, mired in fantasy. And she only had one friend, Sue, with Sue’s very kind parents, owners of the building, who allowed her to live in the rooftop.

Then on top of all those issues, Sadie developed a neurological disfunction that affected how she related to persons. There’s a lot of confusions and miscommunications that happen that could read like a comedy, but I didn’t get that feeling. The author’s excessive blabbing, explaining ad nauseam about the prosopagnosia condition made reading a little tedious. After I finished the book, the theme was incredibly interesting but it needed to be a tighter portion of the book and let the character’s dialogue handle the information rather than give us such long explanations.

There’s a huge plot-twist towards the end that brought a lot of factors in the book into comical relief, and this is where I finally felt like I was reading this author’s usual writing style.

This is very sad because I have loved this author’s previous books. Even though I liked the characters in this story, I found it was more depressing than fun, and it beats the purpose of why I chose this book. Usually the character is going through a bad patch but there are extenuating circumstances, like lovely family, lovely friends, but Sadie’s problems seem to be compounding all the time, not resolving, and she had a toxic family that didn’t seem to get better. Then we got a fast solution on the epilogue.

I absolutely adore this book and Katherine Center! As a psychologist with a neuropsych background, I am always a harsher rater when people are writing about mental health and brain-related topics because I hope the author has done their research and accurately portrays these aspects of health. She did an amazing job describing the experience of someone with acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness).

Overall, this book had GREAT character development and I enjoyed the plot. When faced with a difficult romantic situation between two men, Sadie did not lead both guys on to her benefit, but straight up communicated that she has feelings for someone else. The communication in this book is on another level!

Katherine Center is an auto-buy author for me <3

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book. The characters were so good. The plot moved along well with several pleasant surprises. I like the way Center tells a story like you’re talking to your best friend. Face blindness has been used in several books,, usually thrillers. So, this was a refreshing take on it. Also, the author’s note at the end was fantastic.

This was my first Katherine Center book and it was very cute. I know she loves happily ever afters and I loved that too in this book. She brought a lot of personality and character into the female lead Sadie and I really enjoyed that. I was expecting more romance in this book. I knew it would be "closed door", but there really wasn't much of any type of romance going on except for the two kissing scenes, and I just personally prefer more than that in my favorite romance novels. Overall a very cute story. I would recommend this book to others with the right expectations, and I would/will read more from Katherine Center. I plan to post a review of this book to @_amy_reads_ on instagram on Wednesday, September 20th.

Katherine Center is back and love isn't blind....just a bit blurry:

Sadie has been on her own for a while now, trying to find her place in the world after the death of her mother when she was a teenager and her father bringing in a stepmother and sister into her life, who made her life a living hell. But things seem to be changing when she is announced as one of the top 10 finalists in a portrait competition. She decided to celebrate and everything changes. She gets diagnosed with face blindness, not something you want to hear when you're a portrait artist and now have a competition coming up. Sadie cannot even see her won face. As she struggles to scope she seems to meet two men, who could not be different from the other, but she feels drawn to both of them even though she has no idea what they look like. Could love really be blurry?

Alright here me out, I both enjoyed and disliked this book at the same time. Firstly, I loved the concept of this book and the idea of Face blindness is one that I have not heard about before and seems slightly terrifying at that, especially in the way that Sadie got it. But man was I not a fan of Sadie most of the time. I found her irritating, immature, and just wanting to punch her at times. I know mean but god just have a simple conversation about the face blindness especially when her and Joe really became more serious. I think that Said was portray younger than her 29 years, I mean she had insta-love with a man she could not see and then created a fantasy in her head about them getting married after one meeting. Just a bit too hard for me to believe a 29 year old would think that way. But I will say once I got to the 80% mark really got me and i was feeling all the emotions.

I liked that this book even had a bad girl, an arch nemesis, if you will for Sadie who is destined to destroy everything positive that she has going in her life. I found it heartbreaking and comical at times the length that her "evil step-sister" would take in order to make Sadie's life a living hell. Anyone else feel a spin off book here for Parker, i feel like that would be a character arc of the century.

To put things simply Joe is just a delightful golden retriever who is simply amazing.

This book tried to have some mystery thrown in on it, or at least I think it tried to with the whole love triangle between Sadie, Joe and the Dr. but i personally thought it was pretty obvious so that why i said Tried. I mean how does a reader not make the connection and then we are stuck waiting for Sadie to figure it out.

So overall just okay for me as I loved the face blindness aspect, evil step-sister and Joe but I just could not love the main character.

Enjoy!!!!

Such a great book. SO amazing. katherine center cant do any wrong. Face blindness was a unquie storyline

I enjoyed this book, but was only able to give it three stars because there was a suicide sub plot that came up in the story a couple of times that I did not think was handled well. It felt thrown in there as another (unnecessary example) that Sadie's stepsister Parker was an awful person, and it I felt it wasn't given the weight that such a topic deserved. It was brushed over in light, airy way to match the tone of the rest of the book, so I'm not sure why it was included. I don't think it was needed to characterize Parker since there were so many other scenes that did that successfully. Besides the stepsister, who never redeemed herself, I did enjoy most of the other characters. The story was cute, if not a little unbelievable that Sadie was so oblivious to Joe's identity. Not my favorite of this author, but The Bodyguard is hard to beat.

So there’s a scene in this book where a man is making a bunch of overtly fat-phobic and body shaming comments that appear to be about a woman he had a one-night stand with. Later, he claims he was talking about a dog. Whatever is true, it’s gross and so unnecessary. Why is this even in the book? Anyway, the book is fine buts it’s by no means great, and this makes it a miss for me. Additionally, I would give CWs for grappling with past death of a parent (mom) and seriously strained relationship with a parent (dad).

I know a lot of people loved Center Stage but it didn't hit me as hard as this one did. I really thought the face blindedness aspect added an interesting twist. And I felt empathetic toward this as I had a medical treatment once that caused a similar effect but only for 48 hours. It was enough for me to be super frustrated and also appreciate something so "overlooked" such as distinguising between facial features. Anyway, I really liked this book and I thought it was a nice balance of "easy read" and "so much more"! :)

An all around feel good, heart warming novel. Center had me laughing at loud numerous times throughout the book. You can’t help but fall in love with Center’s story and characters!!

Thank you netgalley and st. Martins for providing me with an earc!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this poignant novel about an artist facing face blindness. She made it to the National Portrait Contest finals. Her father is a doctor. Her mother died and her father remarried. She has a stepmother and a stepsister. Shades of Cinderella here.

She has a seizure and is almost run down by a VW Bettle when she is rescued by a Good Samitarian. she is taken to the hospital where they do a MRi. They discover something in the brain that makes it necessary for her to have brain surgery.

After brain surgery, Sadie has to deal with new challenges.

This novel is about family relationships and how she deals with face blindness.

This is a wonderful story. The characters are realistic. I loved the Afterword by the author about Romance novels.

I was really excited to read this! I’ve read two of Katherine Center’s novels, and loved both, but this one fell a little flat for me.

There was a lot going on for a rom com. Family drama, pet drama, medical drama. I feel like Sadie had so much happen to her and even when she was sad and heartbroken she still just seemed to be fine? Like her step sister RUINED her life and did some really HORRENDOUS things, and even in adulthood this crazy step sister is moving into her building and while there’s somewhat of a blowout in the end it all sort of leads to nothing really other than Sadie and her dad somewhat start to repair their relationship? And Parker just…moved to Amsterdam 😂. And the step mother just wasn’t so evil anymore.

I started to suspect what was going to happen with the romance thread, and when it was confirmed in the end I immediately started trying to poke holes in the miscommunication. The biggest one being Oliver never texted her back, but Joe did. How did she not realize they were the same number? Like if she had Oliver’s number first and then Joe texted her, it would show up Oliver on her phone, correct?

And I feel like with the last few scenes the author is REALLY trying to justify how this all happened, which makes it more obvious that maybe it didn’t make sense and the editor was like we need to clear this up 😂.

Also the dog disappears halfway into the novel after the drama in the beginning and it all just felt disjointed, with these random things happening to try and make the main plot work and once they fulfilled their purpose they fell off the storyline. Which is a bummer cause I really loved this author’s other books.

Overall this was just fine if you don’t think about the details too much. It’s a romcom and it’s fluffy and cute, but it had these dark elements that really should impact the character more and they just sort of don’t? Or maybe it was the audiobook narrator just being really bubbly sounding all the time.

Not my fave Katherine Center novel, but a quick read.

3.5 ⭐️

Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I loved this book, such a sweet story, laugh out loud funny at times. I loved, Sadie, Peanut and all the side characters, minus Parker, she is the worst! Definitely recommend!

This book was adorable! The love story is sweet and swoony. Katherine Center can do no wrong with her romantic comedies! I love them all, and Hello Stranger is no exception. This was a quick fun read for anyone who needs something light and funny and cute in their life right now.

Not my favorite Katherine Center but still delivers the comfort and joy I've come to expect from her. I think the plot was a little overwrought but I still enjoyed the ride!

This is the kind of book where I'm glad I decided to keep reading and not DNF. Because while the beginning was rough, I ended up enjoying the story by the end.

My main complaints with this though is that the main character was kind of insufferable at the beginning, and also, the "villain" of the story was very one-dimensional and didn't add much to the overall story.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book! This book was sweet and fun, but throughout the whole thing so many characters and their trauma seemed way over the top- almost like a book of crazy caricatures. It was an interesting premise, and worth the read, but I could have done without some of the more ridiculous characters.

This was just perfect !! I was a little nervous at the start and then bam I was hooked ! I didn’t want it to end.

As a fantasy reader I don’t read a ton of romance. Especially ones that don’t have some kind of fantasy element. But this one I wanted to read just because the FMC ( female main character ) was an artist. As an artist I felt a pull to it! It was just so good! I love the connections that were formed when the FMC couldn’t see their faces! I loved the twists and turns. I also enjoyed that this book made me feel! I got so sucked in that I felt like the character’s feelings like they were my own! I will definitely be reading more by this author! She just has a beautiful special way to bring life to words and create so much off the page within the reader.

Sadie must learn to navigate her new life. She will be pushed way outside her comfort zone and she will need to try new things! But as the reader your there with her every step wanting to whisper in her ear that she’s doing great. Will Sadie find love? It may not be where you think.

In Short:
Did I like it? Omg! Yes!
Would I recommend it? Yes ! Read it!
Would I read more by this author? Absolutely.

🎨Review 🎨
Hello Strangers- Katherine Center
Rating- ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Hello Strangers was a light, easy & sweet read with a very unique premise!

Our main character, Sadie Montgomery, a portrait artist, becomes diagnosed with face blindness ( hopefully only temporarily), weeks before she is to submit a portrait to an art competition. Although she can still see, faces have become jumbled blurs, and even her closest friend is unrecognizable to her. Amongst the chaos of trying to adjust to her new way of life, Sadie becomes tangled in a love triangle with two very different men; without ever seeing their faces.

How will Sadie continue to do what she loves if she can’t see faces?
Will she re-gain her ability to see faces?
Will she find love?

I had a lot of fun reading this book! I enjoyed the writing style and the way Center carried out such a unique and compelling plot. I loved the warm fuzzy feelings I got while reading this story. I also adored Sadie’s dog, Peanut ( I can always get behind a dog mom MC🐾🖤).

I had a hard time with the interactions between Sadie and her “evil” step sister. I found it to be a little over the top and cringey. I also found myself slightly annoyed with Sadie herself at some points of the story. I empathize with her life changing diagnosis and her difficult family situation, but at times she was a little too “woe is me” and selfish. That is not to say she doesn’t have her good moments too, but I found myself bouncing back and fourth with my feelings towards her character.

Although I did see the twist at the end coming, I appreciated the execution and was very pleased with how the story wrapped up! I would definitely recommend this story to anyone looking for a fun, entertaining light rom-com! 💕
I am looking forward to reading more from Katherine Center’s backlist in the future! 🫶🏼🫶🏼

Thank you to NetGalley & St. Martin’s Press for sharing a digital copy of this book with me in exchange for an honest review.

I fell in love with Katherine Center after reading <i>The Bodyguard</i>, which I gave a very elusive 5 stars to. The characters were awesome and the story, although it had my eyes roll a couple of times, it made me laugh so much more. I had high hopes for <i>Hello Stranger</i>. Unfortunately, it did not even come close to reaching those expectations. The amount of downtrodden bad luck that Sadie found herself in was enough for anyone to give up. The timing of all of the unfortunate situations happening to her were downright convenient in the most miserable of ways. Fortunately, although after this description it could sound like I'm reviewing a dark drama, the book was lighthearted and easy to read.
If you into extremely predictable and unlikely situations leading to love stories, this one is for you.
I will admit that I am really debating on my star rating. I don't want to rate it, because I prefer to not give under a 3 star rating, but I really wasn't a fan of this story. I'm giving 2.5 stars, but will round up to 3.