Book of the Week: Hello, Stranger

The list last week was long, but actually today’s pick is the last book I finished at the weekend – and in fact read in less than a day while snuggled up on the sofa trying to will the cold I have to go away (it’s not Covid, I did several tests…) and it’s also not a Christmas book but won’t worry there are plenty of those coming up over the next few weeks!

I mentioned Hello Stranger when it came out a few months back, hard on the heels of the UK release of Katherine Center’s previous book, The Bodyguard. And Hello Stranger is about Sadie, a portrait painter who has got a spot in the final of a prestigious competition. The only problem is that hard on the heels of this news, she discovers some less good news: she needs (minor) brain surgery. And then when she wakes up she can’t see faces any more. That is to say, the faces are there but her brain can’t make any sense of them and she doesn’t recognise anyone anymore. Which as a portrait painter is a bit of a problem but it’s also a pretty big problem for everyday life too. But she doesn’t want anyone to know about it so she heads back out into a new and different world where she meets a handsome vet and spars with the obnoxious neighbour in her building – but could either of them turn into something more?

As I said this was the last book I finished last week and I basically read it across the afternoon and evening – stopping only to cook dinner, eat and pack my suitcase for the week. And it really does hook you in – and is one of those books where it’s so fun that you can ignore the slight bonkers of it all. And there’s a fair bit of bonkers here – most of which could be solved by Sadie just telling people what her issue is and I never quite understood why she didn’t, except for her pathological dislike of admitting that she needed help and the fact that if she did the plot would disappear. And as someone who works in audio, I found it hard to believe that she didn’t recognise people’s voices more than she did – but again, I went with it because it is a lot of fun.

Sadie also has a really difficult relationship with her step sister and I wanted a bit more resolution to that – or at least more comeuppance for her sister but Sadie definitely comes out on top so that’s good. And overall I liked it a lot – and more than I did The Bodyguard, where I had a few issues that boiled down to having read a lot of celebrity and normal person romances this year and others being better and not really understanding what the hero saw in the heroine. And Hello Stranger has a really quirky premise and is first person in Sadie’s eyes and she has a lot to deal with so you don’t have time to worry about what the hero sees in her!

I also went off and did a quiz about face blindness as soon as I finished the book – and I actually did much better at it than I expected to, given that I think of myself as being bad at faces and names! And I suspect a lot of readers will go off and do the same thing. So in conclusion, if you’re not on the Christmas book train yet this would make a nice read – although given that it’s set in sunny Texas it’s not exactly a cozy winter read!

You can get Hello Stranger on Kindle and Kobo. It’s not out in paperback in the UK until May next year, but if you’re in the US it’s available in hardback.

Happy Reading!