Katherine Center’s books are perfect!! I loved the little plot twist even though I did expect it, it was still executed nicely!! Having Prosopagnosia sounds absolutely horrible, and I think this book did a good job of portraying how anxious and stressed out individuals with this neurological disorder must feel! The relationships in this book were cute, and I did like the family plot line that was added in.
If you have this on your TBR definitely pick it up soon!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for opportunity to read and review this arc honestly.

I absolutely loved this book. It has all the emotions. I don’t usually tear up at books but there are a few spots my eyes got a little damp. The story was well done and I felt like I was there with the characters. Well definitely recommend to others!

I was excited for this because Katherine Center's The Bodyguard was a big win for me last year, so I had some moderate expectations going in. And I'm happy to say, I had fun but I didn't get as many warm and fuzzy feelings as I wanted. The premise was cool, but it was a little too feel good, lit fic for me.

TLDR a woman gets faceblindness and starts liking 2 guys while also struggling as a portrait artist.
What I liked
The characters (minus the step sister and MFC
The comedic moments
The "quotable" lines
The whole concept and writing style
What I didn't like
The MFC. She was a tad bit oblivious
The THRID ACT BREAKUP
Features:
Single pov
MC with a brain disorder
MC grieving a parent
Cute dogs
No spice
3.8/ 5 overall
3/5 anxiety
0/5 spice
Bargain or borrow (buy bargain borrow burn)
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC

Such a weird book. I had such high expectations for this one since I loved the last book in the series but this read less like a romance and more like a womens fiction and I was not here for it.

I really liked this book. There is a bit of a slow start, but once it got moving I fell in love with the characters & story. Joe was wonderful. I also loved Mr. Kim. Sadie was adorable, but understandably a mess. Great story - thanks for the arc!

A slow burn for sure, so keep that in mind... Loved Center's debut and love this one even more. She brings so much heart to her story, and it's a perfect balance of serious/sweet.

Hello Stranger: the first book I've read by Katherine Center.

Okay, so... this book just didn't work for me. I had such high hopes, and was very excited after seeing all the hype surrounding this one and others by Center, but it sadly missed the mark for me.

Things that didn't work:
-not finding myself invested in the story, even after reading 50% of the book
-the juvenile main character. I found Sadie to be snarky, rude and lacking a filter when interacting with others. Honestly, she's exactly the type of character that just rubs me the wrong way. Looking back, I think my biggest issue with Sadie was her lack of self-confidence.
-somehow, I didn't even realize what Sadie's name was, even after reaching the 54% mark
-I did not enjoy Sadie's relationships with her family, including her obsession with her mum
-although I enjoyed the twist-type ending, I did not like how the explanation of it was extremely repetitive
-I found the lack of Sadie’s doctoral visits alarming. I wasn't provided enough information from a surgical standpoint, and I constantly wondered if she was healing properly.

Things that did work:
-prosopagnosia (face blindness) representation
-I did enjoy Joe (a bit)
-I really liked the twist-type ending
-the Author's Note, and how “hope” and “anticipation” are better words to use when describing romances (rather than “predictable”), because, same

As an aside, since I had the ARC in front of my eyes, while simultaneously listening to the finalized market audiobook version, I really noticed the many changes during the final editing process; the book was made substantially better with these revisions (and my review is based off of that more edited version).

In summery, I just wished I liked my first book from Center more!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the complimentary copy to read and review.

Katherine Center is a favorite of mine for a reason- I love her way of bringing deep truths to a fluffy story. With that being said, Sadie was a hard character for me to like. For a lot of the book, she just felt really immature. The love story was convoluted (although I figured it out pretty quick) and took a little too long for me to get invested. However, I did love seeing how Sadie dealt with face blindness and how she evolved over the book. This wasn't my favorite by Center, but I did enjoy it.

From my blog: Always With a Book

Katherine Center has been a favorite author of mine for a while. Her books just make me happy – I can count on some laughing, some tenderness and a sweet love story, and I love that. She creates such real, relatable characters and is able to infuse humor into her stories at just the right time while still giving us little moments of truth.

I always find myself completely immersed in these books and this latest one is no exception. I love that this time around, we are given a character that finds herself confronted with a major medical issue that will have a huge impact on her life. She ends up with face blindness and while it’s not the first time I’ve read a story that addresses this issue, I have to say, it was still quite an enjoyable story.

I think what I love most about Katherine Center’s books is the way she tells her stories. You cannot help but find yourself totally immersed in the character’s lives and that is exactly what happened to me with Sadie. As soon as I started this one, I needed to see how she would handle what life threw at her and I quite enjoyed all the little snafus she finds herself entangled in.

While this is at its heart a story that is classified as romance and possibly women’s fiction, I loved that there were still a few twists and turns that I was not expecting. That kept the mystery lover in me quite happy! Katherine Center is most definitely a must-read for me and I highly recommend adding this to your summer reading list.

Katherine Center does it again! She is back with another feel good romance. I found this concept to be quite unique - a portrait artist who develops facial blindness and has to now go through the world without the skills she most relied upon previously! With that said, I appreciate that Center’s books focus on the main character’s personal growth arc in the story, and not just a love story. Yes, it was predictable (at least for me) where the story was headed, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless. I will say there were a lot of grammatical/editing errors, which unfortunately did detract from my enjoyment, which is why I dropped a star, but I am sure that’s because it was an ARC version. I would still highly recommend picking this book up!

Thank you #NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book!

I really enjoyed reading this book, once I started I couldn't put it down. In Hello Stranger Sadie has an accident that causes to her to have face blindness. As an portrait artist, this causes to her relearn many things like recognizing/interacting with people and her whole artistic process. It also causes a comedy of errors around her new crushes.

Overall rating: 3.8 ⭐

👍
+ I loved the premise of this book, what a unique concept to have a main character that has face blindness. I had first read about prosopagnosia in the book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and this is the first fiction I’m reading with it.
+ I loved the love interest in this book. He’s so giving and thoughtful. A little scarred from life but also ready to heal and be healed. (Though I couldn’t tell you why he was into the MC.)
+ The MC’s grief was handled very well. Even when it’s not on the surface, you can tell how her actions and who she is as a person is colored by her loss of her mother, but also the rest of her family. Even when she says the opposite, you can see how much she cares about her father’s opinions.
+ I also thought the emotional journey the MC goes through after her diagnosis was handled very well. She has moments of wanting to make it work, moments of desperation and wanting to completely give up on everything, and all that felt very real.

👎
- I know some people really related to the MC, so apologies but I just could not bear her. Among many other annoyances, she had such strongly held opinions about everything and if she was a bit more flexible in a big time of change in her life, most of this book wouldn’t exist.
- The whole last chapter/epilogue almost felt like a self-help book. A little too hit you over the head with the lessons of the book, rather than letting the reader get there themselves.
- The villainous character, and the comedy of errors aspect took away from the realistic nature of the rest of the book, making it feel more cartoonish.

Thank you to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the eARC!

3 stars - slow start and had no interest in the main character whatsoever. Liked bodyguard much better

I loved this one! It was a fun and unique plot. I enjoyed Sadie as a character and really loved her arc. I could see where this was going pretty early on, but that didn't stop me from enjoying every second. To quote Katherine Center in the author's note, I felt anticipatory joy for the happy ending! The only thing I didn't love was that I found Parker's character as a little one-note. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed this - definitely my favorite Katherine Center book!

Hello Stranger was my fifth novel by Katherine Center, and definitely one of my favorite so far, though I have given all of them 4 stars. I just love how she writes her characters. They are flawed, funny, and so relatable. My pet-peeve about them is just that they are often irrationally obstinate to the point of testing my willing disbelief. That one negative aside, I know every time I pick up a Katherine Center novel, I am going to not just read a straight-up optimistic romance novel, but I am going to read themes that really touch my heart outside of the relationship ones. In Hello Stranger, the lead character is an portrait artist who has a brain surgery that causes her to lose her ability to see faces. While that inconvenience creates a perfect setting for romantic misunderstandings to create the necessary obstacles, it really hits hard in the area of how Sadie makes a living. So outside of the romance plot, that is a plot that really captivated my attention.

Hello Stranger made me laugh out loud a few times, brought me close to tears a few times, and overall just left me feeling good after I read it. Highly recommend both the book and the author to anyone who needs a pick-me-up read.

I could not finish this book. I found the writing to be very childish, there was no chemistry between the characters and the story was all over the place and difficult to follow and believe.

I absolutely loved this book! It’s a fascinating story about a woman who has a medical emergency and is left with facial blindness. She’s also an artist who specializes in portraits so her ability to study the human face is greatly needed. I really felt for Sadie as she was in the cusp of a big break in her career when this emergency happened. She was also a very independent person and having to rely on others must have been so difficult for her.

Katherine’s writing was wonderful here. I loved how she mixed the romance in with complex family issues and even a medical condition that I knew little about. I’m glad she included more about the condition in a special note after the book was over. After the loss of her mother, her father did what he thought was best and married right away so that his daughter wouldn’t be raised without a mother. But he never told Sadie this and she thought he just forgot about her mom. This was so heartbreaking for both of them. I also enjoyed that Sadie does a lot to keep her mom’s memory alive including wearing her old clothes and roller skating.

The romance is so swoony! Her meet cute with Dr Oliver with Peanut is adorable and I loved that he wasted no time asking her out. Then she meets Joe when she’s at her lowest place and he helps get her out of her funk. I could have kept reading about the two of them all day!

Peanut was a highlight in this book. He was absolutely adorable with this high brow food taste. I’m here for more books about Peanut! 🐶🐾

I’ve enjoyed many of @KatherineCenter books and I think this is one of her best.

I recently read tow books that had “hello” in the title as well as two books about face blindness. Both of these things were purely coincidental but welcome ones at that.

I thought that Center did a great job of balancing the seriousness of the issue with much needed levity in this romance. I will say that The Bodyguard is still my favorite of her books that Ive read so far. This one was fun but its not super memorable in my opinion. I also was not a fan of the twist. I can’t go into details but I did think that it was a little far fetched. It brought me out of the story.

I did love the relationship between the two main characters that blossomed. I think Center handles banter between couples really well. I liked how independent Sadie was as she pursued her passion. I really need to dive into this author’s backlist now.

This book was poignant, funny, and charming. Sadie is a portrait painter who gets prosopagnosia, aka face blindness after an accident. Her doctors are sure it will clear up completely, but in the meantime she can’t work, and even her best friends look like strangers.

Her family has never supported her choice to be an artist, and her stepsister Parker is cruel to her and has been for years. Her stepmother doesn’t see it, Parker can do no wrong in her eyes.

Sadie is cautiously optimistic when she starts spending time with her neighbor, a nice vet who saved her dog’s life, and a maybe bad boy who lives there too.

Katharine Center approaches this subject with compassion, she takes a debilitating (albeit temporary) disability and finds the humor and personal growth opportunities in the situation.

I loved this book and highly recommend it.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed as in this review are completely my own.

I was actually so impressed with this book. I was a little worried at first (hence the reason I put off finishing it for so long) but I shouldn't have worried.

The whole concept of the story was interesting to me. It's not the first time I've read or watched something that dealt with prosopagnosia (Bone Gap, Holding Up The Universe, My Unicorn Girl) but I thought the way they described it was good? (possibly? Someone with Prosopagnosia please let me know if the description was accurate)

I was a little frustrated with the whole non-communication, because a whole lot of hurt could have been avoided. But that would also have cut the book entirely in half. I did see the whole plot twist coming pretty early on, especially when certain things were mentioned several times.

I really really disliked Sadie's dad, step mom...but the biggest villain of them all was PARKER. Don't get me STARTED on Parker. I dislike her almost as much as I dislike Mahito from JJK. But it was interesting to see different familial relationships and feelings explored.

The Kim family was absolutely amazing, and they deserve all the love in the whole wide world. So was Joe for that matter. He was so kind and patient, and just the sweetest. Sadie was a little annoying at first, but I enjoyed watching her grow and learn more about herself.

I sobbed several times while reading this, so that means it gets even more bonus points.

Katherine Center has yet again created a story filled with imperfect yet endearing and relatable characters, and a story line that kept me interested once I finally got over myself and started reading.

Thank you to to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the e-arc!