Book Review: "Hello Stranger" by Katherine Center

Sadie has been determined to follow in her late mother’s footsteps and become an artist. But her lack of success has certainly created a wedge between her and her surgeon father, who vowed he’d never give her a dime once she decided to give up medical school to pursue art.

And finally, she’s on her way. She’s placed as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society’s competition (a contest her mother was a finalist in when she died), and winning this could be the break she needs, financially and career-wise.

She’s ready to celebrate–and the next thing she knows, she’s lying in a hospital bed, in need of urgent brain surgery. Although her doctor says the surgery can wait until after the competition is over, her father forces her into having the surgery right away, because the medical problem she has was the same thing that killed her mother.

While the surgery was supposed to be fairly routine, Sadie is shocked to discover that the surgery left her with a “probably temporary” case of prosopagnosia, or face blindness. She can see perfectly, but when she looks at a person’s face, it appears to her as a jumble of mismatched parts. It’s tremendously difficult for anyone to deal with, but especially for someone who paints portraits for a living. Even when she encounters a person she knows, she doesn’t recognize them, because the lack of facial recognition throws off her perceptions.

As she tries to deal with the potential of having to live with this condition permanently, as well as confront the major family issues she has faced for years, she finds herself falling for two very different men at the same time. She keeps thinking about her dog’s veterinarian, imagining a life with him. But why does her mind keep wandering back to one of her neighbors, who seems like he’d be less of a suitable choice? Is she doomed to a life alone?

Katherine Center is definitely an auto-buy author for me. This was a sweet read, but not one of my favorites of hers. There’s a twist that I suspected very early on, and I thought the whole family dynamic was just too unbelievable and annoying for me, especially given the destruction caused and the reasons behind it.