Hello Stranger by Katherine Center on July 11, 2023
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy
Pages: 336
Format: ARC
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Love isn’t blind, it’s just little blurry.
Katherine Center has outdone herself in Hello Stranger. This is a light read that could easily be a beach read or a rainy day read. Her ability to make us care for her characters is impressive.
Sadie is a portrait artist who recently won a prestigious portrait competition. This is the same contest her mother was part of. Her mother is deceased and her father is a surgeon who she can’t seem to please. He remarried when she was younger and her step-mom, Lucinda, thinks her evil stepsister can do no wrong. The evil stepsister has been the cause of much of her trauma and even bullied a student into an attempted suicide, then blamed Sadie. Sadie has spent much of her young adult life struggling as an artist and doing whatever she can to get by.
But just when things start to be going in the right direction, she ends up having a seizure in the middle of the street. She is saved by a mysterious man and wakes up in the hospital to the worried looking faces of her stepmom and evil stepsister. When the doctor gives her the diagnosis of a malformed blood vessel in the brain called cavernoma, she is told surgery is her only option. Her father even insists on it. But how can she have this surgery when she is weeks from her big break? She has to complete a portrait for the competition. Will she be able to in her condition?
After waking up from the surgery she realizes it may have saved her life, but it may have ended her career as a portrait artist because now she has prosopagnosia or face blindness. Her strange neighbor, Joe, who she barely noticed before starts to talk to her and befriend her. She ends up getting close with him as he helps her out of a jam a few times. And her geriatric dog, Peanut, is also her comfort. Which leads her into a love triangle as her Vet, asks her out also. What is a girl to do when she likes two guys?
The scenes with the guys were funny and witty. I think that Center handled the face blindness with care and thoughfulness. I never realized how many people suffered from this debilitating disease before. This story was more than a romance. It was also about hope, perseverance, and even family. Anyone who is a Katherine Center fan will not want to miss this one.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.