Hello Stranger

What would happen to you if you suddenly lost the one thing that you need for your job, your livelihood, your personal success? Sadie Montgomery is a portrait artist about to potentially get the big break that will make her a success in the eyes of important family members when a potentially serious health condition sidelines her. But even worse, as a portrait artist who specializes in faces, her medical condition has left her with the inability to read faces, called face blindness.

I'll admit, I'd never heard of face blindness and this book makes it so that I'll never forget it! Sadie actually takes her situation quite well and she does have the help of a lovely therapist who helps Sadie navigate this fairly serious change in how she views the world. But there's no way to avoid the fact that the portrait she needs for the contest is not completed, and she'll have to tackle it while she has face blindness.

But there are some bright spots -- namely two -- her new veterinarian who she fantasizes about marrying, and one of her neighbors who lives in the apartment building. Joe, the neighbor, starts out by giving Sadie a wrong impression that gradually changes to something like friendship and maybe more. I don't want to say much more about this, but I truly loved how this unfolded! I had an inkling about what was happening here, but it wasn't confirmed until that glorious ending when a beautiful HEA lands in Sadie's heart.

By the end of this story, I just loved Sadie. The story is told in her voice and point of view which is cute and funny and sometimes sad. Sadie has suffered some loss in her life, for sure. I adored how the family situation come together nicely, even the episode with Sadie's evil stepsister.

I finished this book with a smile on my face and I ended up going back to read the deliciously sweet ending a few times since. Things almost go south for Sadie, but her friends really come through for her.

I loved everything about this -- from the story of a young artist finding her true creative calling to the romance that develops way before the start of the book. The romance here is just a lovely, slow build, that had me loving Sadie and hoping that everything would work out for her.

Overall, this is a terrific feelgood story that had me smiling and re-reading right away. I devoured this is a couple of days because I really needed to know how it all ended up for Sadie, including her art and her family. I just loved this and it will definitely be on my list of favorites for 2023.

I am not sure how this slipped through the cracks, as I am an avid Katherine Center reader! Then I realized that I truly hemmed and hawed with how to rate this book - I think I had some growing to do, and I feel this book helped. Originally, I was going to round it to 4 stars, as I found it an easy read, and rather enjoyable, save for a couple of eye-rolls here, and a groan or two there. And the ending? No spoilers here, but I also won't lie - I thought I knew what would happen. In fact I impatiently awaited its happening (hence the rounding to 4). And then I was gob smacked! Yet, it wasn't the ending that made me hesitate my review. I hesitated when I read Center's author's note, because her words made me go back and see the book in a totally different light. Center is 100% right, "love is healing", and "believing in love is believing in hope."

We tend to shrug off what we don't know or don't want to see. " We're all so steeped in our own confirmation bias. We're all so busy seeing what we want to see."

And as women, we rarely want to admit we need help, especially in today's world. We can also be blind to someone else's weaknesses. “Basically we tend to decide on what the world is and who people are and how things are—and then we look for evidence that supports what we’ve already decided. And we ignore everything that doesn’t fit.” Center really does a great job of bringing emotions, fears, desires, and romance all together in a way that is unique and well, educational. That is, if you open your eyes to it. So thank you , Katherine Center, for refreshing my eyes. Forgiving the eyerolls and the few groans, and the fact that I could recommend this to almost anyone with out any qualms or heads-up, Hello Stranger earned 5 stars.

And I know we are not to really quote an arc, but your words in this book are gold, and need to be read:

“The more good things you look for, the more you find.” " Seeming okay and being okay are not the same thing." - "it's better to be real than to be fake." “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.” “We’re all just muddling through, after all. We’re all just doing the best we can. We’re all struggling with our struggles. Nobody has the answers. And everybody, deep down, is a little bit lost.”

Book club pick

Hello Stranger was the second book I've read from this author and probably my favorite so far. I jokingly said that this would be a 5 star book for me just because of the little old dog, named Peanut because I also had a little old dog named Peanut. The way Sadie felt about her dog was such a relatable and adorable part of this book for me. I loved the MC's the side characters and thought that the premise was so interesting. I also loved learning a little about facial blindness. There were a few things that were a bit predictable, but for the most part I adored everything about this one.

I love reading books by Katherine Center, and here is why: her plots are not overly complicated so that I need a chart to remember the characters; it's an easy read (I don't have to keep referencing the dictionary, and the sentence structure is fluid so I don't need to reread sentences over and over to get their meaning); her research regarding technical aspects is thorough so I don't end up with a lot of questions like, "How could that happen?"; and (a huge one for me) her editors did a great job cleaning up missing words, misspellings and grammatical errors! Oh yeah, they are fun!

Happy Pub Day to Katherine Center and Hello Stranger! Pub Day 7/11

I'm a fan of Katherine Center. She is known for writing solid romances with fun storylines full of comfort and hope. Yet she always introduces the unexpected into what is typically a highly predictable genre. In this case it's a struggling artist with a strange side effect from an injury, a couple (??) of possible love interests, and the cutest sidekick of a dog I've seen in a while.

What I love about this book is the way Center works in an interesting and relatively unknown medical condition that forces our artist to approach work and life in a different way and to learn that it is ok to let others help you. I found the family dynamics to be over the top and the conclusion a bit farfetched, but it was still a fun and fast read. Maybe not my favorite Katherine Center book, but I'll still be first in line when her next book is released.

Note: The author's note starts as a reference to her sources for the research on the medical condition and continues into her love letter to romance books and the romance genre. It is well worth your time.

I both read and listened to this book. I enjoyed Patti Murin's narration of the book.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, MacMillan Audio, and Net Galley for the Advanced Reader's and Advanced Listener's copies of this book. Opinions expressed are my own.