RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
SPICE: 🔥🔥
When you're having a crappy week(end), sometimes a feel-good story is just what one needs, and Hello Stranger was an excellent pick.
Sadie is a portrait artist who is on the verge of a big break. Unfortunately, a mishap during brain surgery has resulted in face blindness. Add family drama and a sick doggy to her now-struggling career, Sadie's headline ought to be "if it weren't for bad luck, she would not have any."
The only upside to her life right now is love, but her bad luck streak strikes again by making her fall in love with not just one man, but TWO. She hits it off with her dog Peanut's veterinarian Dr. Addison, and her neighbor Joe is so incredibly helpful and sweet.
I really enjoyed this read. If life did not get in the way, I would have read it in one sitting. I thought it was clever of Katherine Center to turn Sadie's unfortunate series of events -- especially her medical condition -- into a fun romcom, and she certainly did it effectively. This is my first Center read, but I thoroughly loved her character development. Parker was such a delicious villain to hate, and I fell in love with Sadie's friend Sue and her family.
This is a spoiler-free zone, so I won't say anything about the twist other than it exists. It becomes more obvious as you get further into the story, but I still liked it nonetheless.
** I am voluntarily reviewing an advance copy of this book. Thank you to Katherine Center, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for providing an ARC. **
ABOUT THE BOOK
Love isn’t blind, it’s just little blurry.
Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life—placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition—the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees.
But, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls into—love? Lust? A temporary obsession to distract from the real problems in her life?—with not one man but two very different ones. The timing couldn’t be worse.
If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to find her way. But perceiving anything clearly right now seems impossible. Even though there are things we can only find when we aren’t looking. And there are people who show up when we least expect them. And there are always, always other ways of seeing.
MEET KATHERINE CENTER
BookPage calls Katherine Center “the reigning queen of comfort reads.” She's the New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, and What You Wish For. Her summer 2022 book is The Bodyguard. The movie adaptation of her novel The Lost Husband (starring Josh Duhamel) hit #1 on Netflix, and her novel Happiness for Beginners is in production as a Netflix original movie (starring Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes) right now. Katherine writes laugh-and-cry books about how life knocks us down—and how we get back up. She’s been compared to both Jane Austen and Nora Ephron, and the Dallas Morning News calls her stories, “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Her books have made countless Best-Of lists, including RealSimple’s Best Books of 2020, Amazon's Top 100 Books of 2019, Goodreads' Best Books of the Year, the Indie Next Great Reads List, and many more. Katherine lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband, two kids, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.
