Book Review: Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

Hello Stranger is my first novel by Katherine Center, which is incredible to me, because she a prolific writer of the type of books I like to read. A good friend told me this one is more rom-comy than her usual style. But I was impressed by her writing and will definitely read more titles by her.

Hello Stranger is about Sadie, a young artist who, despite having a tough childhood and young adulthood, is fairly upbeat. She lost her mother at a young age and her father, stepmother, and stepsister are either emotionally removed or downright hostile. But when Sadie’s story begins, she’s just found out that she’s a finalist in a prestigious portrait competition. It’s her “big break.”

Unfortunately, that night Sadie has a seizure and then she needs brain surgery. That leads to the worst part–Sadie gets face blindness, like what Brad Pitt has (though he was born with it, rather than it being triggered by trauma).

Sadie must navigate a new world where she can’t recognize people, and she must also figure out how to paint a portrait while battling face blindness. In the midst of it all, she meets and falls for her neighbor Joe. Now, this is a rom-com, and all sorts of outrageous misunderstandings occur. Sometimes they really stretched believability. Other times, you had to forgive Sadie for being so incredibly dense and stubborn, face blindness or no.

However, it’s a fun, light-hearted romance with an awesome theme: figure out a way to tell your own story. I found Sadie’s struggles and her perseverance inspirational, enough that I could forgive the novel’s inconsistencies. And like I said, Katherine Center is a good writer, providing rich descriptions, complex characters with rich back stories, and lots of humor.

Buy Hello Stranger on Amazon

Spoiler Alert!! Don’t read below if you don’t want a major spoiler.

Also, I believe that Center must have known the reader would figure that Joe and Ollie were the same guy, and that he was also who saved her at the beginning. I don’t think that was meant to be a “twist” but rather, dramatic irony.