“ᴡᴀꜱ ʜᴇ ꜰʟɪʀᴛɪɴɢ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴍᴇ ᴏʀ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴀ ᴘᴀɪɴ? ʜᴀᴅ ʜᴇ ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ ᴡᴏɴ ᴍᴇ ᴏᴠᴇʀ, ᴏʀ ᴅɪᴅ ɪ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇ?”

This was a very unique story that drew me in from the start. The female MC Sadie is a portrait artist and suddenly has an obstacle preventing her from painting faces. This in itself caught my interest as I had never heard of her condition - face blindness - so it was interesting to learn about and how we form our own opinions of those around us based on presumptions from their face. When that one element of recognizing someone or judging someone goes away - what do you do?

This book had so much substance to the plot and subtle twists that it kept you engaged. I loved the side characters in this story from the landlord, to the bestie, and of course the love interestS. Is there a bit of a love triangle going on?

I thought the story did a great job of dealing with toxic family dynamics and overcoming grief. How do you build a life for yourself when you lose your support system, and are still grieving the loss of someone? It was very interesting seeing Sadie navigate all of these dynamics and work to overcome and balance her life. She never came across as a damsel in distress, and very much was find a way forward person.

🎧I listened to this on audio and loved the narrator. I thought she did a great job of encompassing of who the FMC was, and keeping you invested in all of the characters and story.

This was my first book by @katherinecenter , and I will definitely be checking out her others!

Read if you like…
🎨Forced Proximity
🎨Witty Banter
🎨Family drama
🎨HEA

Thank you to Netgalley, Katherine Center, and publishers for the arc.

This is a Romance/Women's Fiction. This book has so many things that kept me pulled into the story, and I loved all the characters. There are a few twisted and side things going on in this book that I really loved. I will not go into details because it may spoil things for other readers, but I will say this book was really well written with a great storyline. The main character was just so great, and she got face blindness after a surgery that takes place in the very beginning of this book. I loved seeing how she handled it, and I really do not know how I would handle not being able to see people's faces. I listened to the audiobook of this book, and I really enjoyed the narrator. The narrator was easy to understand. I was kindly provided an e-audiobook of this book by the publisher (St. Martin's Press) or author (Katherine Center) via NetGalley, so I can give an honest review about how I feel about this book. I want to send a big Thank you to them for that.

I loved this! This was a well-written, funny contemporary romance, with a unique premise and likable main character. When Sadie, an artist, develops a condition known as face blindness, she has to learn re-learn how to paint portraits in time for an upcoming competition. Sadie's sense of humour was great and the audio narrator captured her personality brilliantly, hitting just the right tone for the reflective moments and making the comedic moments burst to life.

At first, I wasn't too happy that one of the love interests seemed to be a character who was a bit of an asshole in the beginning of the story, but the twist in the final chapters completely changed my view on this (we also realise that the LI was not, in fact, being an asshole.) Honestly, the twist was probably one of the best I've read in a contemporary romance in long time, and I didn't see it coming. After thoroughly enjoying this, I treated myself to a copy of The Bodyguard, and I'm looking forward to reading that too.

3.25-3.5 Stars
I wanted to love this novel, but it was too predictable!

Sadie Montgomery was recently in an accident that caused her face blindness. Instead of letting everyone around her know, she thought it would be best to keep it mostly to herself. She continued to live her life as usual. She even tried dating! Of course, misunderstanding and drama ensue.

I love the author's writing style, but the story was too predictable. A few pages in and I was able to predict the entire story. Also, everything happened too conveniently.

Overall, good enough to read, but it didn't wow me.

***Thank you to NetGalley, Katherine Center, and Macmillan Audio for graciously sending me the audiobook to review. As always, all thoughts are my own.***

I really liked this book but I was not surprised since I have read most of Katherine Center's books and liked all of them. This book, as in most of her books, is a love story that also includes some kind of life lesson or human value that is incorperated into the theme of the book. I like that because it makes this book differnent from most romances.The main character is a young woman searching for her best self. She has an accident and the result is her getting temporary "face blindness". I have not read much on her condition but I know that "face blindness" is real. That makes this book quite unique since the she can't see the face of anyone including the man she is attracted to. This leads to some funny situations that had me laughing out loud. I like the character development in the book too. It is a fun book to read on the beach or during a vacation. I recommend it.

This is a tough review to write because I am a big fan of KC and the books she writes. While I haven't loved every single one, I do look forward each Summer to a new release. Last year with THE BODYGUARD, I listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Patti Murrin made that book for me. If it weren't for her, I probably would have DNF this one.

I can see why everyone is giving higher ratings, but I am unfortunately an outlier and I this one just didn't work for me. Surprisingly, the comment that I've seen so much about the MC being insufferable didn't bother me much? I think the narrator did a flawless job of voicing this character and bringing her to life. Where I had issues was with the book being way over the top. Each member of Sadie's family was insufferable in their own way and it was too much. Particularly, when you learn the backstory of the "rivalry" between Sadie and her stepsister, Parker. All of those bad things Parker did that she framed Sadie for and everyone in the family just rolled over and believed it was Sadie? (I don't want to get into spoilers, but there were some very serious things that Parker blamed Sadie for and yet it was very easy for Sadie's father to believe it all happened without any prior history of this behavior.)

Continuing with how things were so over the top - It was a revolving door of bad luck and misunderstandings that led to Sadie always getting the short end of the stick...on everything...A lot of it is fine, but by the time we reached the art show scene at around 80% (I was at my limit at that point), things got kind of ridiculous.

It doesn't matter to me that I guessed the big twist early on in the book. I don't care about certain predictability in a romance, but coupled with everything else, I had a hard time.

I will be sure to request KC's next book as an audiobook in hopes that this was an anomaly. If you loved the book - Great! I'm glad. I hope I love her next one too.

Review Date: 07/17.2023
Publication Date: 07/11/2023

Another fun book and sweet romance from Katherine Center. She never lets us down.

Sadie has never had anybody to believe in her. Despite protests from her father, she is a portrait artist who has finally gotten her big break. She's a finalist in the same contest that her mother was part of before she passed away. Her dreams were materializing at last until she has to have surgery that leaves her face recognition altered. How is she going to paint a portrait now?

Joe lives in her building and she has been under impressed after hearing a phone call he made in the elevator. But as she gets to know him, she discovers that first impressions are not always correct. She finally has someone who believes in her until he ghosts her and she has no idea why. Will she ever be normal again? Will her family ever see her as worthy? And what in the world is wrong with Joe?

I gave this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. I loved the audio version. I love this narrator, Patti Murin. This was a perfect beach read for me. I love Katherine Center's male characters. This had the mean girl, family drama, medical crisis, romance, and the woman who persevered and had the kindest heart. It was a win for me!

Thank you to @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for an advance audio copy in exchange for an honest review!

Another 5 star read by KC. I don’t know how she does it but I hope she never stops. They all revolve around strong independent women, which rocks. As an almost 30 yr old myself, this kind of main character always makes me happy.

Sadie is an artist who does portraits who acquires a disability that interrupts her work right at the beginning of the story. The book focuses on how she navigates her new life. This roller coaster of emotions and love and friendship and let down and apologizes made for one amazing story.

I also loved the extra information on prosopagnosia at the end. It gave some insight that only increased the value of the book.

Representation of disability within books helps share the difficulty of people lives who have these disabilities but also shows how they adapt and have great lives.

Thank you KC!

Katherine Center has crafted a unique novel in Hello, Stranger that explores the ways we know people and the barriers that prevent us from knowing them. Perspective helps us see clearly, and perspective is what Sadie Montgomery lacks. After a sudden needed surgery, she has “face blindness” and feels her world collapsing as her dream of being a portrait artist depends on perceiving facial features.

Sadie, estranged from her father, still mourns the loss of her mother and dislikes her father’s wife and her stepsister. She has one close friend and dotes on her little dog Peanut. But her small world explodes when she must navigate this new world of “face blindness.” She meets a handsome new vet, Dr. Addison, or at least, Sadie thinks he is handsome. Trying to interact with people becomes so challenging when their faces are puzzle pieces. She runs into Joe, a man with a dicey reputation who lives in her apartment building, but cannot recognize him every time. Sadie cannot even recognize her family. And through it all, she is determined to paint a portrait despite the challenges.

This is a sweet, emotional novel that has humorous moments but reaches deep into the experiences that hurt us and never leave us, making our perspective faulty. But it is also about the power of healing and forgiveness and love. I listened to the audiobook and thought the narration brought all the characters to life. Highly recommended!

I liked this book a lot. There's Trinidadian expat representation? By that I mean a Trinidadian going to school and living outside of Trinidad. The distinction better explains the lack of an accent in the audiobook. I loved learning about face blindness. I also like that at the end of every few chapters, I had a new theory or wonder to find out about later in or at the end of the book, It's a good read!

Happy *soon to be* Pub Date to Katherine Center and Hello Stranger! Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Katherine Center for allowing me to read an ALC (Advanced Listener 🎧 Copy) for an honest review!

📅 Hello Stranger will be published TOMORROW (Tuesday, July 11, 2023). 📅

This book is for the hopeless romantics out there. A story that you’d listen to on Delilah radio IRL. For the readers that believe beauty isn’t just skin deep and love a second chance romance. It’s like drinking a cozy cup of hot cocoa that you weren’t aware you needed.

For Sadie Montgomery, love isn’t blind…it’s just a little blurry. Sadie is a struggling artist 🎨. She paints portraits and is determined to win an upcoming annual art 🖼️ competition. That’s until she is diagnosed with face blindness. For the first time in her life, friends and family are strangers to her. In many ways she is a stranger to herself. Will Sadie be able to acknowledge just how much she can bring to the table (professionally and personally) as she navigates her new diagnosis?

Sadie finds herself torn between her neighbor Joe and her vet Dr. Addison but it just doesn’t seem like either prospect will pan out.

Joe - her *new* neighbor, really has to prove himself after Sadie overhears him fat-shaming women. She initially believes him to be quite the player and jerk.

Oliver Addison - life motto = animals are welcome and people are tolerated. Sadie’s gut tells her that Oliver is her one true love and happily ever after. Oliver falls in love at first sight but doesn’t quite know how to verbalize his feelings. Hence, Sadie starts to give up on love. Will she ever be able to find her knight in shining armor solely based upon their character and morals?

What I loved:
💕 Laugh out loud funny at times.
💕 Morally strong characters. A heartwarming story through and through!
💕 Sadie is challenged to meet people without a visual first impression which allows a deeper connection.
💕 How Sadie reinvents herself as an artist (boldly like a Phoenix rising).
💕 The theme of finding your one true love (even if you have to give them a second chance).

Sadie is a struggling artist following in her mother's artistic footsteps. When she gets the news that she has been chosen to participate in a competitive exhibit over hundreds of other entrants, Sadie decides to head down to the shop for a few things to celebrate. On her way to celebrate what may be the big break in her career that she's been waiting for, Sadie is in an accident that results in a brain injury and a shock corresponding to a diagnosis of face blindness. How is Sadie supposed to succeed as a portrait artist when her brain can't piece together faces? How is she supposed to succeed personally when she can't even tell someone she's known for years apart from a stranger? And most importantly, will she even be able to see her best friend in the world, her beloved dog, anymore?

Pros:
- Unique perspective
- Relatable characters
- Interesting family dynamic
- Found family
- Loyal "dog mom" storyline
- Sweet romance
- Really enjoyable narration for audio version

Katherine Center is known for delivering heartfelt stories that often tackle characters' fears or traumas. Hello Stranger has a unique premise -- an artist who is about to embark on a personally and professionally fulfilling contest discovers she needs brain surgery and, after the surgery, develops facial blindness.

While the premise of this is unique, and I was interested to see where the story would go, a number of things fell a bit flat for me. First, the main character feels very out of touch and failed to grasp the seriousness of her condition and then subsequently hides the condition out of fear that people will see her differently. A lot of her views around the condition felt ableist and I didn't love her narration. Second, the resolution felt simultaneously too neatly tied up and unrealistic. As a result, this story was a three-star read for me because I did enjoy the writing and felt invested enough to keep reading, but the execution of the interesting plot didn't wholly work for me.

Sweet summer read. My first Carter book and I will certainly want to read more, appreciated her author note at the end about HEA endings and the predictablity. Great option for a beach read. I was rooting for the main character the entire time.

About the Audiobook:
Credit where it's due, the audio narrator is SO GOOD! I'm almost certain that this is the type of book that could have been ruined with the wrong narrator. But she was impeccable in her delivery, full of pathos when needed and with zero cringe with her voices.

About the story:
I went in with high hopes for this book since I read last year's The Bodyguard by Katherine Center and loved it. This book didn't really disappoint (I read it in one evening/ couldn't put it down), however, it wasn't without its issues.

I found it ironic that the book as an author's note in which the author pontificates on the element of predictability in romance novels. I agree with the points she makes in this note, but it still doesn't excuse when predictability becomes trite or cliche which I do feel this book does. I have no problem admitting that I can and often do enjoy a book that is fully cringe (this book veers into cringe more than once). The author's note makes sense to me, what I'm looking for in a romance is a good dynamic between the romantic leads, a believable progression of feeling and a happy ending that feels earned. if you give me those three things, I'm going to like your story! This book gave me those three things! But I must say that it also has a ton of over-the-top-ness and truly asinine logic that it tries REALLY hard to explain away.
I'll give a benign example in spoiler tags (view spoiler)
But I can excuse all that, the reasons I took a star away are 1. that we spend so much of the third act explaining the "twist" as if the reader didn't figure out the twist from page 5!! We thought you knew we knew, book!! why are you explaining this to me like I'm 3? and 2. the way that the sister was portrayed irked me a bit. She was a cartoon villain with absolutely zero nuance. I want my characters to feel real.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this. I liked the set up, the premise and the romance, but I didn't super enjoy the implausibility of some of the aspects
((and btw, I'm NOT talking about the face blindness issues when I talk about implausibilities. I'm talking about lack of communication and reader/author trust and/or dynamics. ))

“Hello Stranger” was an absolute TREAT!!💙 This is my fourth Katherine Center book, and it left me with all the same warm feelings that I’ve come to love about Katherine’s writing🥰

Sadie, the FMC in “Hello Stranger” dealt with a very unique condition known as “prosopagnosia” otherwise referred to as “face blindness.” This was an especially challenging diagnosis for Sadie because she was a portrait artist and a finalist in a prestigious art competition. I had never heard of this condition before, but was fascinated to get an in-depth look at what life would be like if we weren’t able to see people’s faces!! You could totally tell Katherine spent HOURS doing tons of research to do this condition justice👏🏼

Although I can’t talk much about the romance without giving away major spoilers, I will say it was SWOONY!!!! And FUNNY!!! And HEART-WARMING!! And don’t even get me started on the ENDING🤯🤐🤭 That’s all🤫😍

I also wanted to say that I’ve never fallen in love with a character’s pet before, but Peanut changed that🥹🐶 I absolutely ADORED this doggo and his refined taste palate😂❤️ Best book pet EVER🥰

Overall, I REALLY enjoyed this story!! It left me with a sense of hope, deep satisfaction, and restored faith in humanity❤️

🚨TW: death of a parent & bullying
🚨CW: closed door romance with swoony kisses & infrequent strong/mild language

5.0

My ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This was the first book I’ve read by this author but had anticipated great things based on the reviews I’ve seen and I was not disappointed. The story was fast paced, kept my interest and had a cute angle. I’ll definitely read more by this author.

Hello Stranger By Katherine Center 🩷💛💙

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ /5

Finally, my first five-star read of 2023 and I couldn’t be more thrilled for it to be Hello Stranger. 🤗 I absolutely adore Katherine Center, so I had impossibly high hopes for Hello Stranger and I was not disappointed! 🙂

Hello Stranger opens with Sadie, a portrait artist, discovering she is a finalist in a national competition. Unfortunately, a series of medical events occur leaving Sadie with “facial blindness”. Left without the ability to see faces, Sadie has to learn to navigate her new world, contend with meddling family members, multiple love interests and figure out how to finish a portrait for this once in a lifetime opportunity she’s just been given.

Right from the beginning, I adored Sadie, and that affection only grew as time went on. From some of Sadie’s hilarious internal dialogue, to her dancing to Smokey Robinson in the supermarket and roller-skating her heart out to some disco on a rooftop, to her struggles to believe in herself and find her way forward, I found her super relatable. 🕺 🪩

I will say, I saw the ending coming, but I’m not mad about it. Katherine Center spent a good time near the end wrapping it all up with a pretty polka dot bow so everything was explained.

I can’t wait for the next one, as Katherine Center has been an auto-buy author for me for some time. 🩷💙💛

Sadie is going through a lot when we first meet her. She has a seizure, learn she has a tumor passed down from her dead mother, has a nonexistent relationship with her dad and step-mom, has no career progress in the past 10 years, has recently been dumped and finally she is living in a hovel. Rough times all around. Then it seems things might turn around but when she has life-saving surgery she can no longer see people’s faces. This is a big problem because she is a portrait painter (because of course she is 🙄) and has just been accepted into the North American Portrait Society competition, the same one her mom competed in when she died.

Out of all the tropes in the romance genre, the one that annoys me the most is miscommunication. There were so many times when Sadie could have easily fixed a relationship, problem or career if she had just spoken to someone or asked a question.

Why did she not ask Joe where he worked? Why did she not talk to Mister Kim about a place to live? Why not speak to the competition organizers and let them know what's going on? Why not talk to her dad about the surgery? It just got frustrating seeing Sadie miss everything that was going on right in front of her and her being too stubborn to ASK QUESTIONS!

The story also fell a little short for me with how repetitive some of it was. And while I enjoyed the happily ever after, everything was just a bit too predictable and I know what was going to happen by the 60% mark.

Im not going to say everything was bad though, I loved the MMC and her friendship with the other characters there were just some parts I could not get past. The audiobook narrator did a wonderful job of keeping my interest and making me want to continue with the story.

🌶️ Spice Meter 🌶️ : 1 out of 5 Peppers

Final Thoughts: The idea is cute and unique and I did laugh out loud a couple of times, but I struggled with the main character’s behavior and wanted her to just be more inquisitive.

Disclaimer: Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

After years of feeling stagnant and like a failure as an artist, Sadie finally catches a break. She places as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition. She's riding high, until she's not. She wakes up in the hospital after having a seizure in the middle of the street and being saved by a Good Samaritan. She finds out she will require surgery for a malformed blood vessel in her brain. She wants to put it off until after the contest, but her father is adamant she get it done immediately. Sadie comes out of the surgery with prosopagnosia, face blindness. She can no longer see faces. Sadie has difficulty navigating life with her condition. Everyone she meets is a stranger until she can place them based on other cues. Then two men enter her life - her dog's hot new vet and her sexy neighbor.

This was a big HUG of a story. From her amazing BFF and her sweet parents, her adorable dog, Peanut, her therapist and of course Joe - I loved it all. Did I forsee the twist? Yes. Was it any less enjoyable? No. As, Katherine states in her author's note - we all want that HEA when we read a romance. We're not here for the surprises. We're here for that feel good, fuzzy warm feeling and this book delivers that in spades.