Hello Stranger by Katherine Center
Published by St Martin's Press on July 11, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Pages: 323
Format: Audiobook ARC
Source: Publisher (Netgalley)
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Love isn’t blind, it’s just a 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.

I’ve been wanting to read a Katherine Center book for a while now, and I finally had time to sit down with my Netgalley audio review copy and do it! Hello Stranger brought out a lot of conflicting opinions and emotions in me. At times I wanted to DNF, and at other times I couldn’t stop reading. I loved Sadie and I hated her. I went back and forth between being so invested and being so irritated at these characters. lol. Let’s see if I can make this review make sense!

Probably my biggest issue with this book was how self-absorbed and self-centered Sadie was. Face blindness is not something I’d heard of before I read this book, and it sounds scary and frustrating especially for someone who was not born with this condition. It sounds heartbreaking to go your entire life loving and appreciating faces, only to wake up from surgery and not be able to see them or recognize anyone anymore. And the author did a really good job of explaining what this is like. I empathized with Sadie and felt so bad for her, but then I quickly grew tired of the constant complaining and whining. This girl didn’t care about anyone or anything other than herself, and I can’t fathom that. I would feel so lonely going through something like this, and I would crave closeness with people. She refuses to tell anyone she’s face blind, which is her prerogative and not something she owes anyone, yet she also refuses to make adjustments to her social skills to try to compensate for this. She memorizes hairstyles, gaits, and clothing styles but she never asks anyone about themselves or shows genuine concern or interest in anyone she interacts with. It’s all about her. She goes through a bit of a love crisis, not knowing which man in her love triangle to commit to, and if she had showed either of them any real interest or gotten to know them on any sort of deep level it would have been so much easier for her. But instead, she focused only on herself and didn’t get to know either one of them well enough to actually know them.

This brings me to my next issue: communication. Nobody in this book can effectively communicate with one another. Assumptions are continually made. Judgments are made without knowing all the facts. Life is very confusing for multiple people in this book because they won’t ask questions and they won’t think critically about their interactions and use a little common sense to decipher them. Feelings are hurt, lives are ruined, and things happen that shouldn’t because there’s not one character, main or secondary, who can communicate. I stayed up past 5AM yesterday morning because I figured out something important very early on and got so irritated that these people couldn’t figure it out on their own that I couldn’t sleep until things were resolved. So I guess that’s a point in the author’s favor, but when a book is compulsively readable because the reader is furious is that still a good thing? LOL.

Another issue I had was this author’s writing style. It’s very repetitive, which I believe was made worse by how the narrator chose to read it. For example, and this is not a direct quote, let’s say that Sadie is thinking to herself and about her newfound hop. It would go something like this: “I have hope again. Hope that I can X. Hope that I can X. Hope that I will X. Hope that life will X.” And when the narrator reads these kinds of passages, she sounds like a robot. I would have much preferred “I have hope again, that I can X and X, that I will X, and that life will X.” The repetitive “Hope that..” over and over again really annoyed me and I found myself rolling my eyes. This same thing happens multiple times in the book, including the author’s note at the end, and I feel like it’s done in an effort to sound profound or sweeping, but I got very bogged down in all the extra words.

So… why did I continue if I had several really big issues with this story? Well, good question. I did almost DNF, but I really wanted to know how things were going to work out. I really loved Joe. He’s sweet and helpful and selfless, and I found him to be so endearing and patient. I loved Mr. and Mrs. Kim, who own the apartment building Sadie and Joe live in. I hated Sadie’s evil stepsister, Parker, who might be the worst villain I’ve ever read about who was not either a monster in fantasy novel or a serial killer in a thriller. Parker made me so mad, and the narrator made her voice so grating, that I wanted to throw things. At the same time, I really wanted to know how that relationship turned out. I wanted to know who Sadie ended up with, if she ever killed Parker, and if her dad ever grew a heart. Since this is a romance (although, there was no actual romance until about 40% and the bulk of the story felt like women’s fiction), we have to assume there will be a happy ending. So I wanted to know what that looked like for Sadie. Did her face blindness go away? I had many questions. This is such a unique storyline, and I was so intrigued (and ok, infuriated) that I couldn’t stop reading.

In the end, I’m glad I read this. The ending was really sweet, even though I knew exactly how it was going to go and we could have gotten there so much easier… but that clearly wasn’t the point. lol. This was not supposed to be an easy journey for me as the reader, just like it wasn’t supposed to be an easy journey for any of these characters. Nearly all of them are suffering in some way, and they all go through it. Some aspects of the story didn’t feel realistic at times, and some felt impossibly confusing just for the sake of making the story work, but it got me to read it. lol. I have only myself to blame for the emotional tsunami this author put me through because I could have quit! BUT. I didn’t. When I finished the story I was smiling. I was basking in the swoons and the sweetness and the pure relief that things were resolved and I’d be able to finally sleep. So there was good and there was bad, but one thing’s for sure: I will never forget this story.