Another solid book by this author! After reading and loving Out on A Limb, I knew I wanted to get my hands on this author's latest book? because I felt I would enjoy it also. I'm so glad I did. This was such a quick, easy, and enjoyable read. It can be read as a standalone, but I'd recommend reading Out on A Limb first, not because you necessarily have to, but you'll be missing out on a great book if you skip over it.
Hannah's books remind me alot of Katherine Center's writing. They have characters with alot of depth and emotion like Center's do and even this book reminded me of Happiness for Beginners by Center. Not because they had similar plots, but because they both used hiking and the wilderness as the main setting and background to help the characters' with their soul searching and grief. I'd highly recommend picking this book up when it releases.

**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dell for the advanced copy!

Wow, wow, wow. I truly wish I could put into words how much this book means to me and how much I connected to it. Where to even begin? I was highly anticipating this book as Hannah Bonam-Young is one of my favorite authors and I have loved everything written by her. I read Out on a Limb when it was first indie published and re read it earlier this year. I loved Bo and Win and was so excited to see we were getting a story focused on Sarah and Caleb.
I have such a soft spot for Sarah and Caleb and their relationship and where my connections start. I am with my high school sweetheart and he’s become my partner in every sense of the word (an engagement is on the horizon) We met in our senior year of high school and has been together ever since. I could relate to so many things Sarah was going through, not to discredit these relationships but it’s hard to discover who you are as a person when you’ve spent your adult life with a partner. Sarah’s struggle with discovering what her “thing” is and not just being a stay at home wife. Trying to do things for her and not just for Caleb. I recently moved states in a sense for my boyfriend’s job, as rewarding as ever in the end for me, it was scary but that was a choice I had made putting his needs first. The similarities didn’t stop there but I don’t want to spoil other aspects of the book. Both Sarah and Caleb’s character development and relationship development was done so well and felt so raw and relatable.
The side characters at the camp were so special and I love that we got to know them too. Win and Bo’s cameos were everything to me of course.
I wish I could accurately get across how relatable this book was to me and how I’ve never felt so seen before. This is definitely in my top 5 of the year and I will be talking about it A LOT before it comes out in January 2025!
Thank you Hannah Bonam-Young: you get it

Thanks again to NetGalley and Dell for the advanced copy!

I loved the duel timeline, great characters that are lovable with real problems, and the humorous parts woven into the otherwise serious story. I chuckled, cried, and self-reflected throughout the entire story. This is my first Hannah Bonam-Young book, and I am now a fan! I can’t wait to read Win and Bo’s story (even though it came first).

Wow, I didn't think Hannah Bonam-Young could top Out on a Limb but she did it. And this comes from someone who typically doesn't love second chance romances. We were introduced to Sarah and Caleb in Out on a Limb (Sarah is Win's best friend) as the couple friends to Win and Bo who have been married since their early 20s. This book follows Sarah and Caleb as they go on a couple's camping retreat in the woods and try to reconnect with themselves and each other. Through flashbacks of them as teenagers, the reader is given the full history of their relationship. This book felt like therapy to me. I love that Hannah captured the complexities of growing individually together and how sometimes life can get in the way of prioritizing that. I love a romance that has great character development and Hannah nailed that with Sarah especially. This is my second Hannah Bonam-Young book and she is now an auto-buy author for me and I am eager to read her previous works! Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing, and Dell Romance for this e-ARC. I will post a review on Instagram (@bookologist_phd) in January.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋`🌿:✧˚ Thank you to NetGalley and Dell for the opportunity to read & honestly review this early ˚˖𓍢ִ໋`🌿:✧˚

A Note from the Reviewer:
🏞 I'm going to try to review this without getting too personal. However, I am nothing if not an overshare-er, so I apologize in advance. 🏞

What I Liked:
🏞 The flashback scenes of Sarah and Caleb's relationship when they were younger and how it laid the foundation perfectly for the people they became.
🏞 The side characters and the influence they had. Seeing Sarah and Caleb bond with the other hikers was nice to see because they gained other perspectives from those people.
🏞 The love that never wavered between Sarah and Caleb. This was handled in such a mature, thoughtful way and it just felt so real.
🏞 The tension. Anyone who has been in a relationship for a LONG time has had those dry spells. But when the dam breaks, boy does it break.
🏞 How in touch Caleb was with his emotions throughout Reignite. It was eye opening to see him have this realizations in real time and actually made me feel some sympathy toward my own husband.
🏞 Everything. I liked/loved everything.

Final Thoughts:
🏞 As someone who met their person young - this book felt scary to read. Marriage in trouble is a terrifying trope and I was scared I would read something so deeply personal that I'd never recover; and I did. But it wasn't in a bad way. This book made me realize that everything I have felt and have been going through doesn't have to be an isolating experience. Hannah Bonam-Young wrote such an amazing example of what it feels like to be so deeply in love with your partner, but still feeling empty. Going on this journey with Sarah resolved some things in my own life; or at least helped to. This is a book I will be thinking about for a long time, and I suggest everyone reads it when it comes out.

There were a lot of things I loved about this novel. There such tender moments, humorous moments, real moments. It shows that marriage isn't perfect but that it can be worth saving. But....
Honestly, I couldn't stand how ungrateful and harsh Sarah was. Caleb was an absolute DRRAM of a husband. The more I learned about their love story the more her stance to simply divorce him made NO sense.
She was blaming the ONE person (besides Win) who stuck by her, understood her in her time of grief, never complained, did everything to make her happy....for making her feel unaccomplished?
Excuse me but quitting school was your decision. Not finding a job was your decision. Getting married a joint decision. It was just sad how she put her insecurities and self doubt all on Caleb.
During their wild journey he learned to maybe speak up for himself too and maybe do a little LESS for his wife to give her room to grow. Which is valid! Loved that. Just hated how for granted and small she made Caleb feel and how ready she was to give it all up.
I've seen marriages were the men ACTUALLY suffocated their wives and made them feel insignificant enough to feel they were nothing without them. Caleb wasn't that man. I'd take a Caleb in a heartbeat 🥹😍
That being said, the arguments and desires felt legit and real. The frustration of taking city people and taking them camping made for fun times and the side characters were a riot 😂
Also loved the friendships old and new and how even the counselors were shown to be imperfect humans but with wise advice 😊

I love everything this woman writes!! I hadn’t ever read a romance book with a couple trying to save/revive their marriage without some period of time spent separated/divorced, so I was curious how it would be handled. And I really enjoyed it! I’m such a sucker for a road trip/adventure/nature-centered novel, so this was right up my alley. I also really appreciated how she dealt with grief and how it can manifest in such different ways for people. Out On A Limb is still my favorite of her books (and I absolutely LOVED getting more of Win and Bo in this one!), but definitely recommend this one too.

As an Amy March girl (and someone who has no idea what they want to do with their life 👀), this hit home. I normally don't love second-chance and fixing a marriage kind of plot but I loooved this. Sarah is such a grief-stricken and lost person at the beginning and throughout this you get to see her heal, help someone else heal and find out what she wants to do with her life. She's so strong and I wish I could be more like her. I cried waay too many times reading this. And Caleb..he's a very good boy. Also I met Hannah while I was reading this and she's the most lovely and funny person ever.🩷🥾🐿️🍃🏕️

Thank you for the ARC! It was an honor to picked and I can’t wait to have the physical copy in hand to display on my shelf.

The story was very relatable to me as I was also married at a young like Sarah and Caleb. I did start wondering to myself if I have done enough with my life like Sarah was questioning. I really liked that bo and win were included in the story line. I haven’t read a book before where the characters were already together and married. There no break up at all by the way. I think Sarah had a touch of undiagnosed adhd for how often she would zone out during conversations. I get it, I’m the same way but it got to be a little much half way through. Now the ending took me for a ride. Still no break up, just everything comes full circle. I did enjoy the dual timeline and it was some very nicely.

This would be a reread for me in the future!

⭐️⭐️⭐️½

I thought I was going to love this one. Like Caleb and Sarah, I have been in a relationship since high school. It's interesting that people sometimes comment on how easy our relationship must be since we've known each other so long. This book illustrated the point that every relationship requires work. No matter how long you've been together, every couple can grow in communication.

I'm not sure why, but I had a hard time connecting with Sarah in this book. In Out on a Limb, I thought she was funny. But I kind of feel like she worked better as a supporting character. She was not likeable on some levels and I felt like Caleb was too good for her. Hannah Bonam-Young does an amazing job of writing male main characters with heart and who will make you swoon. I just kept questioning why Caleb loved Sarah so much in this book.

Nonetheless, I love Hannah Bonam-Young's writing. And the sex scenes in this book get an A+!

Steam level: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️: cancer, death of a mother, grief

Thank you Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC! This was absolutely incredible! I adored how Hannah Bonam-Young was able to take such big topics and allow the reader to feel so many emotions. I was sucked into the story from the start! This book had me laughing and crying and I couldn't put it down. I really appreciate how throughout her stories she writes such powerful messages that leave you feeling so strong. This book was perfect. Out of the Woods publishes on January 28, 2025.

**ARC Review**
1. Thank you to Hannah BY, Netgalley, and random house publishing for this ARC. To receive an ARC from my favorite author…. Mind blowing
2. Holy shit. Out on a limb has been my favorite top 5 books since I read it, but this one is honestly rivaling for that spot. As a married woman who has experienced communication issues, this hit the nail on the coffin. I FELT their problems and related on such a real note. I loved watching Sarah and Caleb fall back in love again. I’ve never cried so much AND laughed so hard during a book.
Hannah, I love love love you and I love the way you write. There’s a rawness to your stories and characters that are so relatable. I can’t thank you enough for writing a story like this bc it’s not something that’s often written about.
Anyway, NO NOTES!!!!!!!

⭐️: 5.0
Kindle

- marriage in crisis
- high school sweethearts
- first love
- second chance

5⭐️3🌶️

“That’s my good wife.”

“It’s been a very long time since I fucked you quickly, baby. A grown man knows how to take his time.”

One thing about me? I’m a sucker for a second chance, marriage in crisis. Sarah & Caleb were each others first loves back in high school, and have now been together since they were fourteen years old. But, they’re both starting to realize that they’re not 14 anymore, and what worked for them before doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll still work for them now as Sarah is beginning to question her life’s purpose.

As Sarah is trying to talk to her best friend to figure out what to do, Win suggests they attend a week long couples retreat/camp to help learn how to better communicate and listen to one another. Will they use this time to reconnect and grow their relationship? Or will their time together really cause them to grow apart?

THANK YOU THANK YOU to Dell, NetGalley, HBY, and the rest of the publishing team for this ARC!!

WOW! This is probably the best book I've read in a minute. I adored Out on a Limb. I absolutely loved every snippet of Sarah and Caleb I could get and was so excited to be getting a book all about them. This book was a beautiful letter to the way love can heal and persevere. Through all of the hardship and scary life things, their love was always there. It was such a comfort to them, and to me too, because Caleb and Sarah love so hard and so deep. The way their love extends to the people in their lives makes them the kind of characters you cannot put down or walk away from. Above all else these two loved each other so completely. Their story was built on such a solid foundation that even with a few shakes, they ended up okay. May a love like theirs find everyone who wishes for it. I also haven't laughed out loud reading a book in a while and this book had me genuinely laughing. I needed that this week.



This review is available now on Goodreads and will be available on my Instagram @kays.reads_ before the publishing date.

First and foremost, I want to thank the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for accepting my request to read and review Out of the Woods!

This is my first Hannah Bonam-Young book (but not by choice - the library waitlist for Out on a Limb is a million people long. Good for HBY! Not so good for me, lol), and I fell in love.

This story drew me in from the get-go. The second chance marriage trope is a favorite and this one did it so incredibly well. That sweater analogy is one that will stick with me.

I felt that the author did an amazing job on characters! For one, I could FEEL the tension, love, fear, and hope between Sarah and Caleb throughout the story, and it kept hitting me right in the gut and making me feel things. There were definitely watery eyes a time or two. Second, I thought the relationship between Sarah and Win was incredibly well done. Again, I could FEEL their friendship. The author did a good job of writing their relationship without trying too hard. There was just an ease to it, and their dynamic worked really well. And lastly, Sarah had a quirkiness to her that I loved - it was super relatable. It's nice knowing other people have weird, quirky thoughts bouncing around their heads, too (she reminded me a bit of Sarah Adams's quirky characters).

My only reason for not giving it 5 stars is that there was something about the ending (the third act) that left me unsatisfied. I felt it wasn't needed, and I'm not sure how it added to the story. I can't exactly put my finger on the reason, but it threw me off.

But overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I'm looking forward to reading more of this author's work!

Thank you to the author Hannah Bonam Young, NetGalley, & RHP for this ARC of Out of the Woods!!!

I absolutely adored this novel. I read Out on a Limb earlier this year and loved it, so I was incredibly excited to revisit Win & Bo as well as explore the marriage between Sarah & Caleb.

I related so much to Sarah. I love how the author portrayed her and expressed her feelings about how she was feeling in her life. I also related to a few things she mentioned (in terms of age) because we are the same age hahaha so it made me giggle quite a few times!

Sarah and Caleb were too cute. I found their relationship to be great even before the wilderness trip but during it only created a stronger bond. They truly were always meant to be together, and I can see how Caleb is a lil cinnamon roll MMC.

Overall, this book showcases a beautiful relationship, friendships, and necessary spice 🥵
While also teaching you a few lessons about life and how important it can be to put yourself first. Highly recommend!!

Took off a star because I felt like it may have needed a little more conflict? Overall it was so realistic but I would have loved just a little bit more oomph to get me going!!

P.s whenever Caleb says baby I swoon

Out of the Woods is a simply beautiful book with real feeling, real conversations, and a real approach to how a young couple who married out of high school might feel in their 30s and how to overcome the what ifs and mid life crisis that might come up in their marriage.

Sarah and Caleb had been together since they were in high school, always supporting and having each others backs. Caleb supporting Sarah more with the illness that swept her mother away. Now, Sarah questions who she would be if Caleb had never been there, is she her own person? The two embark on a hiking trip for couples and see if they can get out of these woods they are stuck in.

This book has a lot of heavy topics, marriage in trouble and grief. I don't think I was prepared for the emotions around her mom in addition to their own issues which caught me off guard, making this more serious and gloomy than I was expecting. It was really beautiful and I thought it was honest, how they worked through their issues. More realistic than other marriage in trouble books I've read.

Thank you NetGalley and Dell for an eARC of this book in exchange for my opinion.

This book was absolutely amazing!!! I’m happy I got the chance to read this book and I loved it from beginning to end. The characters development and their love story was the best I’ve read in a while. I definitely recommend that anyone who is wondering if they should read this book DO IT you won’t regret it.

You never know what a couple is going through behind closed doors. Sarah and Caleb are picturesque in Out on a Limb. Relationship issues come to light in Out of the Woods when Sarah realizes she has felt complacent and unaccomplished since her mother's death over a decade prior.

This book was a beautiful journey of a couple reconnecting with each other both within and out of their comfort zones. The emotions both main characters go through are so real and raw.

Sarah has a hilarious inner (and sometimes outer) monologue that keeps the story feeling light and refreshing, even when dealing with heavier topics. I might even love her now more than Win...

Honestly this book couldn't have come at a more perfect time in my life (thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!), as similar to Sarah, with marriage and motherhood, it is so easy get lost in everything relating to our kids & husband that we forget to make time for ourselves. We sometimes lose what makes us, us.

This can be read as a stand-alone, but the story is much better having read Out on a Limb first.

... Oh and Miss Hannah, I caught the extra subtle Taylor Swift reference in that of Sarah's e-reading streak, and my little millennial heart adores the NSYNC line.

High school sweethearts Sarah and Caleb have hit a rough patch in their 17 year marriage and make the spontaneous decision to get out of their comfort zones and join a grueling hiking trip intended to guide couples through rough patches. It's unusual to have a romance novel about an already established couple and I was a bit skeptical, but Bonam-Young won me over. Told from a single POV, it has a dual timeline with flashbacks of the couple's origin story. Also, I loved that Sarah and Caleb are childfree by choice.

Although this can be read as a standalone, I highly recommend reading Out on a Limb first, not only because it's an excellent book but also because of the cameo appearances you'll get of Bo and Win in Out of the Woods.