Book Review HELLO STRANGER Katherine Center

🎉ℍ𝕒𝕡𝕡𝕪 ℙ𝕦𝕓 𝔻𝕒𝕪!🥂 July 11 2023 



Happy Pub Week to this very special romance, written by an extra special author, who I once heard describe her romances as being a little sad because she herself is a little sad, for a very special book, in whose characters disabled readers can find themselves and know finally that we too belong in the warm pages of romance. 

This is an update to my original review for the paperback, which I read and reviewed last winter after winning a very early ARC copy. I'm reviewing the audiobook specifically, which was so different from the arc copy I read back in November! Thank you to Macmillan Audio and as always, NetGalley, for providing me an advance audiobook copy for review. 

The audiobook narrator, Patty Murin, sounded nothing like the Sadie I had created in my head! It took me a little while to get used to the voice on the audiobook, but after a while, I loved her interpretation of the character. Murin wonderfully captured the character's emotional range with her voice, somehow expressing 100 different degrees of stress and anxiety! 

I really enjoyed my read of the paperback, for many reasons. I remember relishing the details Center gives about everything, from  the medical aspect of Sadie's temporary disability to her coping mechanisms, to her art processed and colorful family history. 

How the audiobook compares is that the emotions take center stage. The details cohese into these wonderful swaths of narrative expression, like colors on a canvas. My experience with this audiobook had me vocalizing and squawking adorable noises all over the house while I was listening, Aw's and Oh's, and my poor husband! I scared him senseless because I ran up to him and grabbed his arm and yelled, "this is the best romance ever!!" while flopping his arm around. It's a miracle he's still here. A Katherine Center miracle!

Rating and recommendations remain.💖


*January 24 2023 

Seeing the world differently helps you see things not just that other people can't-- but that you yourself never could if you weren't so lucky. It let's you make your own rules. Color outside your own lines. Allow yourself another way of seeing. p312

Thank you, first of all, to Katherine Center and St. Martin's Press for gifting me an ARC of HELLO STRANGER as part of a Booksta giveaway, way back in December. I have been reading this book since then with great interest! But I struggle to read print on a page (it puts me fast asleep) because of some brain issues I have. So to say I felt represented in these pages is a vast understatement.

As a voracious reader with numerous disabling psychiatric and neurological complexities, I'm hungry for books that represent people like me or my friends. I'm so excited when I find that an author has deeply researched their characters' lifestyles and daily routines, as well as their possible challenges and medical and social interventions. Realistic depiction is important to educate readers, but consistent depiction is important to welcome in readers whose lives are under discussion.

Katherine Center's treatment and development of her main character Sadie, was so well done. This element alone brings about believable conflict that needs to be resolved between multiple characters, backlighting the important theme, "we are never in anything alone."

I shared the short excerpt above because, in HELLO STRANGER, the protagonist Sadie is put in a position in which her survival-- professional, social, and even physical-- rests on her willingness and ability to adapt. What makes this book so good is watching her struggle so much to avoid change (it's a hard pill to swallow, brain changes; trust me!) but learning in time to lean into it.

And finding love!🥰 Among so many other priceless things.

Rating: 😍😍😍😍😍 / 5 faces Sadie can't see
Recommend? Omg please read this book!
Finished: January 24 2023
Read this if you like:
👤 Mental health rep 
🫑 Sweet romance
🐶 Puppies!
🤭 Mistaken identity trope (like a lot!)
🎨 Art and painting
👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Family drama

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