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.
What I thought about 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.
Katherine Center is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of How to Walk Away, as well as the upcoming novel, Things You Save in a Fire (August 13, 2019). She’s also written five other bittersweet comic novels about love and family, including The Bright Side of Disaster, The Lost Husband,and Happiness for Beginners. The Lost Husband is currently in production as a feature film starring Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb. Katherine’s work has appeared in Redbook, InStyle, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Real Simple, Southern Living, InTouch, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle, and many others.
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