I loved the way this book was written. There were funny and clever moments that I wasn’t expecting. The way the past is woven in with the present gives a better understanding of the characters and their relationship, and god were they so cute together as teenagers. Caleb is incredibly sweet and generous and supportive… and so in love with Sarah. Top tier book husband. You can’t help but love these two. All the side characters were fun and interesting too. I really appreciated how grief was covered in this book. It’s a tough topic, but it was very relatable. The spicy scenes were so delicious and the amount of spice made sense with the story. Highly recommend!
4.5⭐️ 3🌶️

If it wasn’t for parental duties, I would have read the book in a single sitting. It was so refreshing to read a romance book that reflects the difficulties of marriage and the beauty that can come from sticking through them. I felt seen by this book in ways I have not experienced through books before, and I want to say thank you to Hannah for that 💕

If you enjoyed Every After Always by Chloe Liese, then this is definitely up your alley!

My only reason for deducting a star is that I wanted to see even more!

This was such a beautiful written book!!
The relationship between these characters definitely is relatable to a lot of other people so it was easy for me to read. The true meaning of this book which I believe is about healing; really spoke to me and moved me. The FMC character was so relatable because there’s so many people who have lost a parent at a young age and as a result had to grow up faster than most people. Sarah finding who she is without her mom and not completely relying on Caleb was a lovely journey. I have to say I loved that I’ve finally read a book with my own name (Sarah) being used so that was fun. The banter between Caleb and Sarah is the true definition of marrying your best friend that you’re utterly comfortable and in love with. This couple made me laugh and cry and all the things! My favorite part of this book was Caleb’s letter to Sarah; I CRIEDDDDD. The letter was full of pure emotion, power, and true love for her and I couldn’t get enough of it. Caleb’s character was who I want in a man in more ways than one. He was so sweet and understanding and willing to do anything for his marriage and to make it right again. I loved that we still got Win and Bo dialogue because I absolutely loved the first book in this series about them! It sounds like this series has come to an end but it ended seamlessly and I can’t wait to read more from Hannah.❤️Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC and provide feedback.

This book was EVERYTHING. Caleb and Sarah? Emotional warfare, I laughed and I cried (a lot). Their story was raw, messy, and so real it hurt (in the best way, obviously). The dual timeline was genius, it made their love and struggles feel so layered and genuine. Caleb’s devotion was swoon-worthy and Sarah’s journey of self-discovery hit wayyyy too close to home. My only gripe was that I needed more time with the conflict bc for me it wrapped up a little bit fast for my taste but honestly, this book broke me and put me back together. I’ll be shoving it into everyone’s hands ASAP

Thank you Random House Publishing and Netgalley for the E-arc!

Hannah has a gift for writing emotional vulnerable and heartwarming novels. I appreciate how real and honest her storytelling is.

Out of the Woods is a real marriage in crisis novel that tackles personal identity and the main characters own relationship. Throughout the book, I could really feel the passion that Hannah had for this novel.

This novel has a dual timeline, I think seeing exactly how Caleb and Sarah's relationship began was important to their dynamic and as to why they were having problems. Although, I wasn't a big fan of some of the chapters, it helped paint a better picture for these characters.

I think Caleb and Sarah are two very honest characters who wanted to save their marriage. I think that the camp setting had a great premise but do I think that was enough for the relationship? Not really.

This book felt too fast, in order for the camp setting to feel "realistic" and 'necessary" for their relationship it needed to be more filling. We only got to see a couple of moments in which camp felt useful to their relationship but that alone wasn't enough.

The ending felt to sudden and rushed for my taste, I would've liked a different conflict and solution to this novel because the ending felt too random and out of the nowhere.

I liked seeing the complexity between Caleb, Sarah, and their relationship. And think this is worth checking out.

-high school sweethearts x marriage in crisis, week long retreat 🏕️🪵🏞️
-thoroughly enjoyed Sarah and Caleb’s journey, this “second chance” genre has a special place for my shelf
-thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for this ARC ❤️

4.0⭐️

While you can read this book as a standalone, I highly recommend reading Out on a Limb first to get the whole overview and picture of this couple as they are first introduced there.

Sarah and Caleb are high school sweethearts that are going through a marriage crisis. They are together through the whole book, just doing lots of internal work together to have a healthier relationship and be on the same page.

A quote right at the beginning of the book I loved:
“I think maybe that’s the issue. We’ve been letting shit pile up for years, ignoring it like the bills on our moms’ kitchen table. But now they’re all past due and we’re too tired to deal with it all.”

As Sarah and Caleb embark on a weeklong, outdoor therapy adventure they learn things about each other and how to reconnect when things get a little dicey. I loved how realistic this book was, and I resonated a lot with Sarah and how she’s dealt with things. There is a HEA and I loved how it was wrapped up nicely.

This is one of those books that makes me wish there was an option higher than 5 stars available for ratings. I don’t quite know how to put into words the emotional connection I had with this book.

From the moment I read Out on a Limb and was introduced to Sarah and Caleb, I had a gut feeling their story was coming soon, and knew it would deeply resonate with my heart as someone in a going-on-12-years relationship with my first (and only) boyfriend, whom I started dating when I was 16 years old.

This story absolutely hurt my heart in such a GOOD way. It feels appropriate that this will be the last book I finish in 2024, as it’s shaping my mindset to be so appreciative of my own long time partner heading into a new year. Sarah and Caleb’s relationship is messy and understanding and difficult and simple and comfortable and fresh and so many things all at the same time that just make sense when you’ve been with one person for so long, particularly one person you’ve grown up with. The final portion of the book hit me so hard emotionally that at times I had to take a moment away from reading before returning to the story, but I trusted HBY wholeheartedly to do this story justice and I was not disappointed.

I will be rereading this book several times over and purchasing multiple physical copies for different annotations and notes to process my many feelings about these two.

I have been a fan of HBY for each of her books, but this is on another level 🤍

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this eARC!

📖 Book Review: Out On A Limb by Hannah Bonam-Young

‘When our perceptions begin to shift it is usually because we’re ready for something new.’

My thoughts 💭

Please check for trigger warnings. ‼️

Wow, where to even begin. This book knocked my already high expectations out of the park. Sarah and Caleb have been together since high school and with that have experienced all of the ups and downs of life in your teens and twenties. It comes as no surprise that they both needed something to get the ‘spark’ back so they embark on a week long couples therapy hiking camp. Along the way they both end up healing not only their relationship but also their personal insecurities. At the beginning Sarah as a character really made me quite angry because Caleb is such a precious angel I didn’t understand how she could see anything wrong with him. But as the story progressed and you got more backstory on her upcoming and relationship with her mom it made sense. I also adored the multiple cameos of Win and Bo from ‘Out on a Limb’. They are both stand-alones that are interconnected however for the best reading experience I would highly recommend reading ‘Out on a Limb’ first! 6/5 ⭐️

HBY has become one of my auto buy authors and I have zero complaints.

OOTW lives up to the hype with the care that HBY puts into all of the characters she writes. I saw so much of myself in Sarah as she feels stuck and unsure of where to take her life and still dealing with the huge loss of her Mom.

The story hit all the emotions I want to feel while reading. I was sad for Sarah and Caleb as they struggle but fight to work on their marriage. I laughed with them and felt joy for the friendships they made that helped them work on themselves and find what they want. I also loved getting to see Win and Bo again.

I did find the ending crisis in this book to be very random and took me out of the story slightly but other than that it was a joy to read after a 2 month reading slump!

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC

I really loved Sarah and Caleb’s story as a whole! Obviously loved seeing Win and Bo too. Personally some of the spice felt out of place to me but it didn’t take away from the story as a whole. Would still highly recommend. I genuinely love HBY writing.

This is my second novel from Hannah Bonam-Young and so far she can do no wrong in my opinion.
If you've read Out on a Limb and liked/loved Win's best friend Sarah and her husband Caleb, this book is all about them. I loved it! I loved learning about Sarah's background. I loved the recognition of ALS as my own grandpa passed from the illness. I loved seeing Sarah's and Caleb's relationship improve.

Would defintely recommended.


Thank you to Netgalley for the early access to Out of the Woods in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Hannah Bonam-Young has the rare talent of being able to make me laugh out loud and want to cry all within the same page. Out on a Limb is one of my all time favorite books, and I loved seeing a good amount of Win & Bo (and Gus!) in this book, but Sarah & Caleb’s story is a very different vibe. Where Out on a Limb is painfully sweet, Out of the Woods is a lot more emotional, although no less good!

Sarah & Caleb got married at 19 years old, and this is their story more than a decade down the line, where they’re facing some growing pains and trying to figure out how they each fit into the relationship’s dynamic as things have changed over the years. It’s told in present day, with some flashbacks to various moments of their relationship in their teenage years, which also gives us some sweet/heartbreaking moments between Sarah and her mom.

It’s a little hard to read at times, because it gets very real and vulnerable. There’s a lot of discussion around grief and self-worth. There’s still plenty of humor, too, though! Overall, it’s another classic Hannah Bonam-Young novel, with lots of laughs, lots of feelings, and lots of lovable characters.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine / Dell for the ARC of this book!

4.75/5⭐️

“You can go as far as you need to, but you’ll always be a part of me. You will always need the second voice in my head. The force that surrounds me. The source I pull inspiration from.”

this story follows sarah and caleb, who have been married for the past seventeen years, and have gone through various ups and downs through life. however, one day after sarah organizes a fundraiser for her late mother, and failed to raise sufficient funds, until caleb, her husband, decides to step in with a generous anonymous donation to save the night, sarah feels like she’s been depending herself entirely caleb, and she realizes she doesn’t know who she is without him, and doesn’t appreciate this gesture. their argument stirs a lot of emotions for sarah, allowing her to question her trajectory of her life, and how unfulfilled she feels. to try to resolve and confront the challenges in their marriages that they’ve been avoiding, sarah and caleb go on a seven day hiking trip designed as a couples’ therapy retreat.

this book took me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, but as always hannah-bonam young always delivers. i really loved reading about sarah and caleb’s journey, especially after reading out on a limb. i really loved the use of both the past and present timeline, to show both the growth and love both caleb and sarah have for one another. it also was really nice to read sarah rediscovering herself and who she wants to be, and caleb always supporting her journey. both caleb and sarah’s relationship felt so real, you could tell that even though this was a marriage in crisis book, that they never once didn’t love each other so deeply. also caleb is actually my MAN. he would do anything for his wife in a heartbeat and i love his for that.

What this book did to me emotionally should be categorized as a punishable by life felony in all 50 states tbh

I’m so happy Hannah Bonam-Young is getting the praise she deserves now! Out of the Woods is a beautifully unique romance, taking you through 14 years of relationship building. It’s complex, it’s not pretty, it’s tough but as you read you come out the other side of a loving, heartfelt story. Thank you for the ARC!! It was a joy reading Out of the Woods!

This same review will be available on my Goodreads upon the novel's publication, which is linked on my NetGalley profile, as I am unsure how much detail I am allowed to include in my review before the novel has been published.
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
I very much enjoyed Out on a Limb by Bonam-Young and was so excited to receive an ARC for Out of the Woods. I thought I would relate even more to the characters in this book than those in Out on a Limb, as someone who started dating my partner quite young and does not plan to ever have children. However, there was just something about this book that left me feeling disconnected from the characters and not really caring about their relationship. One aspect was definitely how much their problems revolved around them being rich. I understood Sarah's struggle of not knowing who she was outside her relationship, but personally it was so hard to care about her problems when they revolved around her feeling stationary as a rich stay-at-home wife (not that there's anything inherently wrong with that). Caleb also had a sort of epiphany about making his business better for all the people who work below him, but personally this just felt like a red flag that he'd been running his business any differently before then, and was also wildly unrelatable. Additionally, the ending felt quite random and thrown in to make the reader feel like the third act had something happening that wasn't the typical third act conflict. I did enjoy seeing younger Sarah and Caleb and the sections about Sarah's mother and Sarah's grief. Lastly, I was not the biggest fan of their dynamic, sexual and otherwise, and found myself cringing a lot more reading this than while reading Out on a Limb.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the digital ARC!

Out of the Woods
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“𝙰𝚕𝚕 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚋𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜.”

Sarah & Caleb are everything. Hannah did it again. She created these characters that you cannot help but absolutely adore and cheer for. Out on a Limb is one of my absolute favourite romances and Out of the Woods has joined it.

Sarah wrestles with the internal WHO AM I struggle and who the hell can’t relate to that?? Caleb is such a sweet, loving man. As their own characters, I adore them both, but as a team they are truly just amazing. This story so accurately portrays marriage and life with your partner after the “honeymoon stage”.

I loved the flashbacks to young Sarah and Caleb. I loved seeing their relationship in both stages and seeing how each Sarah and Caleb worked through some of their own internal battles to become a stronger couple.

Seeing snippets of Bo & Win was such a treat as well. I love their friendships so much.

Thank you so much Random House Publishing & NetGalley for the ARC

Hannah did it again. Another 5 star read! In Out of the Woods we get to check in on Sarah and Caleb from Out on a Limb. After meeting when they were fourteen and marrying at nineteen everyone that knew them thought their lives were picture perfect. However they have hit a bump in their relationship and realize that they need to find a way to fix it. With a suggestion from Sarah's best friend Win they embark on a couples retreat set in the woods. Camping, hiking and pooping in the woods are definitely not something either one would normally choose. But sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to put things into perspective.

I loved reading about Sarah's journey and how much of her issue have been tied to her mother's passing. Her grasping at trying to be the perfect stay-at-home wife has left her feeling unfulfilled. This in turn has made Caleb reeling since he believed they had that perfect life. The anger and resentment they both struggle with is very relatable as someone that's been with the same person for a long time. With some reflection and forced nature activities though, they both find that their goals will always align as long as they work together

As someone who got Married to their high school sweetheart at 25, ten pages into this book i was thinking “oh my god, this play is about us.” This book defies romance genres a bit in that it isn’t a second chance, there’s no “breakup.” It’s really just about saving a marriage that’s changed a lot the same way people change from 19 to 29. I loved the hopefulness of it! Finding the love of your life at 16 is both a blessing and a curse-there’s so much growing up that happens between and you’re unlikely to be the same people for long, but i loved this books celebration of romance IN marriage.