Thanks to Macmillan Audio for the copy of this ALC!

"Seeing the world differently helps you see things not just that other people can’t—but that you yourself never could if you weren’t so lucky. It lets you make your own rules. Color outside your own lines. Allow yourself another way of seeing."

Katherine Center has such a way of immersing her readers in her stories, making her characters relatable and every emotion tangible. In Hello Stranger, we feel through, Sadie a struggling portrait artist on her way to a lucky break in a competition when she's hit by a car, has brain surgery, and is diagnosed with prosopagnosia (face blindness). Yep - a portrait artist who can't see faces. In the midst of this, her family is completely unhelpful (and she has the most EVIL stepsister), but she also meets a very handsome vet she thinks could be her future husband and starts having feelings for the hipster guy living in her apartment building. The suspense was built up in this book with the looming portait competition deadline and the love triangle, and I simply couldn't put it down! While feeling the ups and downs in Sadie's life, I was also laughing out loud at all of the hysterical moments in this book and really just having a pleasant time with this warm hug of a book.

Really loved Patti Murin as a narrator for this one - she was perfect!

4.5⭐️This story follows portrait artist Sadie Montgomery who after years of struggling to reach success, finds out she earned a finalist spot in a competition that can be the break in her career. She is about to celebrate when something goes terribly wrong and lands her in the hospital needing brain surgery. What she didn’t expect was to wake up with acquired apperceptive prosopagnosia, meaning she cannot see faces and of course, now paint portraits like she used to. As Sadie tries to navigate her new normal, she discovers more not only about herself but also about her family, neighbor, dog’s veterinarian and the world around her.

Katherine Center has a way with words and this book was no exception. It had less romance than The Bodyguard but seemed to be in line with How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire, where the love story wasn’t the focal point but was definitely there and o so swoony. Sadie was the strong, independent protagonist and type of character you want to root for, especially when the most evil step-sister gets in the way of her happiness. I loved watching her growth, learning about her career and seeing her finally stand up to her family after years of being treated unfairly. While the story covered some heavier topics like grief, I still found myself laughing aloud throughout and was in awe of how she pulled it all together at the end!

Read if you like:
-Close proximity
-Family drama
-Love triangles
-Portrait artists
-The recovery process post surgery
-Dogs

Katherine Center continually blows my mind with her ability to touch readers and write unforgettable love stories with such amazing emotional depth!! In this story we get to know Sadie, a portrait artist on the brink of her big break who discovers she needs brain surgery after an accident.

Reluctant to go ahead with a huge competition looming, Sadie's father forces her to go through with the surgery. The catch, after the surgery the swelling in her brain leaves her with a condition called Prosopagnosia, aka face blindness. Left unable to identify people's faces, Sadie is stuck trying to figure out how she'll paint a portrait for the competition.

Full of toxic family relationships, beautiful found family and the most swoony romance imaginable, I seriously couldn't get enough of this story even though I found elements completely predictable, the ANTICIPATION of finding out how the two main characters would get their HEA kept me flipping the pages late into the night.

HIGHLY recommended, this is my new favorite book by one of my favorite authors. She tackles some hard topics in this book, from grief over the sudden death of a loved one to an unexpected disability and the uncertainty of the future. It's also a beautiful love letter to the romance genre and readers do not want to skip reading her author's note at the end!

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review! I really liked the narration by Patti Murin too!