Musings on Romance

Tag: Disability (Page 1 of 3)

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center,  narrated by Patty Murin

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center,  narrated by Patty Murin. A new favourite author/narrator pairing.

illustrated cover, cartoon style with a pretty white woman in a pink party dress and pink roller skates raising a paintbrus in the air on the right and a handsome white guy in kind of nerdy/conservative clothing with a little white dog on the left. They appear to be on a rooftop in a city at night.

Last year, The Bodyguard was in my best of list – not only did I enjoy the story but I adored the narration by Patti Murin – so it was a no-brainer for me to review this year’s release Hello Stranger.

Sadie Montgomery is a portrait artist, broke and desperate to get her big break. She barely squeaks by with the earnings from her Etsy shop. She lives in her studio which she’s not supposed to do as her landlord, Mr Kim, (her BFF’s father) assures her it’s not “fit for human habitation”. She refers to it as her “hovel”.

Her father is a very successful cardio-thoracic surgeon who is disappointed with Sadie’s career choice. When Sadie’s artist mother died when she was 14, he remarried very quickly thereafter. Sadie does not get along well with her stepmother, Lucinda, and positively detests her stepsister, Parker, – who is a very nasty piece of work indeed.

But things are finally looking up! Sadie is a finalist in a national portrait competition – one of 10, out of a pool of 2000 entrants. In six weeks, she has to deliver an original portrait and she has the chance to win $10,000 and finally get some success.

On the way home from buying party supplies to celebrate her making the cut, she has a seizure and is rushed to hospital. There, she is diagnosed with a venous malformation in her brain which needs to be fixed or it could be fatal. It is the same thing that killed her mother. Following surgery, Sadie is left with a condition known as “acquired prosopagnosia” – acquired face blindness. She not only cannot recognise faces (something those who are born with prosopagnosia cannot reliably do to one degree or another), but the faces themselves are a jumble of pieces, like a mixed up jigsaw puzzle or a Picasso painting. For a portrait artist, this is a disaster. The condition may or may not spontaneously resolve. It’s a lot for her to cope with.

Sadie is comforted by her beloved dog, Peanut, who is a “gentleman of certain years” and her sudden crush on Dr. Oliver Addison, the new vet at the clinic where Peanut was boarded when she was in hospital. She can’t see his face of course but she just knows he’s a looker. He’s also very kind and loves animals. Check and check.

Meanwhile, her neighbour, Joe, moves from “weasel” category into the friend zone. She thought he was a womanising creeper but as she gets to know him she realises that’s not what he is at all.

Sadie is a person who does not like to ask for help. She is always and ever “okay”. Great, even. Joe is the guy who is always willing to help. He helps anyone – even Parker, when she moves into the building largely to mess with Sadie, because she really is awful.

Over the weeks leading up to the portrait competition, Sadie has to find a way to paint a face that doesn’t look like a police sketch or a ghoul and, she has to ask for help. Both of these things are incredibly hard for her, especially because she refuses to tell most people about her face blindness. She thinks of it as a failing or a weakness and is embarrassed by it.

It’s not difficult to guess the gimmick of the story so I don’t necessarily give myself points for picking how things ended. What makes it so fun is the characters and the way the story is told.

Sadie is wonderful. She’s funny and interesting. Her flaws are realistic and understandable. She has had to learn to rely on herself since her mother died and her father essentially abandoned her (emotionally at the least) and now it is a point of pride to keep doing it. She wants to honour her mother and find some further connection to her with her painting. Just before she died, Sadie’s mother was also a finalist in this same portrait competition.

And Joe is the best. I never believed he was a creep – I figured who he was talking about in the elevator that time. He’s kind, generous, smart and good-looking. Mr Kim calls Joe “helpful” because that’s what he is. But he’s no doormat either.

The only thing I’d say is that I think the “gimmick” went on just a little too long. I began to get impatient for the big reveal. For me, it tipped over from tension to the wrong side of frustrating. But this was only very close to the end and it’s a small thing in the bigger picture (heh, see what I did there?).

Patti Murin is fantastic. I just love listening to her. She has wonderful comedic timing and perfect intonation. Katherine Center writes with humour but its often about the delivery in audio and the jokes land every time here. But it’s more than just jokes. It’s the amusing asides, the whip smart turns of phrase. Ms Center writes them and Ms Murin delivers. It’s a perfect author/narrator pairing.

Ms Murin has a great range of character voices, excellent pacing and wonderful emotion in her performance. I enjoyed listening to her so much I immediately went to Audible to find more of her work.

Grade: A

REVIEW: Social Queue by Kay Kerr

Illustrated cover in purple/lilac with pink "talk bubbles" for the titles. On the top talk bubble is a rear view of a brown-haired white girl in red and a cat by her feet, on top of the bottom talk bubble are 5 white people, 4 guys and 1 girl all looking up at the girl on top and holding something like a flower or a coffee or an ice creamWhy I read it:  I was provided with a review copy by the publisher. The book is currently only available in/from Australia and New Zealand.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) I thought I was nobody’s teen crush, but turns out I was just missing the signs.’

Zoe Kelly is starting a new phase of her life. High school was a mess of bullying and autistic masking that left her burnt out and shut down. Now, with an internship at an online media company—the first step on the road to her dream writing career—she is ready to reinvent herself. But she didn’t count on returning to her awkward and all-too-recent high-school experiences for her first writing assignment.

When her piece, about her non-existent dating life, goes viral, eighteen-year-old Zoe is overwhelmed and more than a little surprised by the response. But, with a deadline and a list of romantic contenders from the past to reconnect with for her piece on dating, she is hoping one of her old sparks will turn into a new flame.

Social Queue is a funny and heart-warming autistic story about deciphering the confusing signals of attraction and navigating a path to love.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): I don’t read a lot of YA – let’s face it, I’m in it for the romance. Zoe is 18 and so technically an adult but the book is very much a YA, not least because while there is a romance with a hopeful HFN ending, the main story is of Zoe’s own self-discovery and coming of age.

In her first year of university studying journalism, she wins one of three coveted four-week internships at “Bubble” an online media outlet which seemed something like a small Buzzfeed, based in her hometown of Brisbane. She’s also recently dipped her toe into the murky waters of online dating (something I have no experience with because I’m old and married) and it hasn’t gone so well. So she pitches an article for Bubble about her experiences as an autistic young woman navigating the apps. After the first article goes live, there are a five comments which seem to indicate that she’d missed prior signs from people she’d gone to school or worked a part time job with and that spurs a series where Zoe gets in contact with each of the five to find out what she missed and see if there’s a spark of something now.

Romance readers will not be surprised by who the eventual HFN is with but I will not name names here. Continue reading

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