I really didn’t enjoy this book. I enjoyed it for the first 30 ish percent after that I found it boring. I was unable to connect to the characters and I feel like the main couples issues were solved way too fast. Overall, this book put me into a slump and I was left skimming the last 40 percent in hopes it would get better.

Sarah and Caleb have been together since they were young teens. Now they’re into adulthood and have shouldered more than their fair share of grief. Sarah feels like she no longer knows who she is on her own, and Caleb fears losing the person who makes him feel whole. The two end up on an outdoors couples trip that forces them to get out of their comfort zones and face who they are as individuals and a couple. Can they grow together or will this be the final thing that drives them apart?

This is not the normal romance I would read due to it being second-chance(ish). Despite that, I found it enjoyable. The majority of the book is present day, but there’s also scenes that go back in time and lay groundwork for who the couple is today and how they got there. There’s grief and trauma, but there’s also love and joy. If you’re a fan of Hannah Bonam-Young’s other work, you’ll enjoy this one too.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

✩5

I’ve known Caleb for over seventeen years now and loved him for nearly as many.

✦What to Expect✦
•HS sweethearts
•Married couple
•Hiking/couples trip
•Forced proximity
•Found family
•Hot nerdy MMC with glasses
•Loss of a parent/ALS

✦Characters✦
•Sarah Green/Linwood
•Caleb Linwood
 
✦Fav Quotes✦
Life kept going, the Earth kept spinning, everyone moved on, but I stayed still.

“If you give me the space to grow, I’ll plant myself next to you. Always.”

“I think heaven might be real.
I think it’s you.”

✦Thoughts✦
Be still my heart.
Truly all the feels.
I’m fine, it’s fine… I am just going to start crying again.

This is story is so beautiful.
It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

CALEB IS A PGOM!!
*precious gem of man*
Truly the most lovable & caring man.

Sarah my heart hurt for her so much.
She was so relatable and I enjoyed her so dang much. I lover her growth & journey to figuring out what she wanted to do.

You could feel the love between these two so much. I knew it was going to be okay, because you could tell they are truly soulmates.
I loved them finding their way back to one another and figuring out what they want their future to look like.

That ending was so emotional
And that epilogue. PERFECTTTTTT

While this book is heavy subject matter - it hit super close to home for me. I absolutely loved it.
I was lucky enough to receive this ARC - I am an out on the limb Stan and I was soooooo excited to get this one
Sarah and Caleb are high school sweethearts with some heavy backstories that they don’t really deal with when they are young and it come around to start hindering their marriage. Will they come out together in the end?
What you can expect:
- marriage in crisis
- high school sweethearts
- a outdoorsy marriage retreat
- light spice
- heavy subject matter
- reminiscing about parental loss

Out of the Woods

Sarah and Caleb are high school sweethearts and have been together since they were 16 years old. After years of being together Sarah feels a sense of uncertainty and not exactly sure of who she is without Caleb. Win suggests that she attends an outdoor couple’s retreat. In hopes to save their marriage, Sarah and Caleb agree to go, in attempt to find their way “out of the woods” and back to each other.

This story was relatable in so many ways. I’ve been with my husband for over ten years and have felt those same feelings/emotions as Sarah. I love how this story portrays the hardships of marriage and not just the smooth and pretty sides. I also loved how it gives a sense of hope, showing us that with hard work and effort you can make things work out in the end. This story was so wholesome and real. The addition of Sarah and Caleb’s shared history also add to the emotional impact of the book. The humor and spice included is just a bonus!

Out of the Woods in an interconnected standalone that is meant to be read after Out in a Limb. Although its not necessary, its highly recommended.

Title releases January 28, 2025

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

5.0 stars

I know I wont be able to sum up in words how much I loved this book. And I'm really not surprised. HBY writes in such a way that I am fully invested in her characters like they are my in real life friends. She writes emotions in such a human way. I highlighted SO many lines in this book. It lived up to everything I thought it would be.

Sarah and Caleb are my husband and I. We met at 14 and got married at 19. Seeing a romance book written for a couple that found each other as soulmates at such a young age and got married just a young that stayed married is SO rare. I love that HBY had them do the work to win each other back. The pure terror that Caleb felt because Sarah was stuck in that horrible place of 'what ifs' Its so natural for that to happen in your 20s but add a marriage on top of that? Those 'what ifs' seem so much louder.

It was truly a book about a husband and a wife finding their way back to each other. While still being their own person and never wanting the other person to comprise on something. All Caleb wanted was to save Sarah from any hurt life might throw at her since she had the ultimate hurt of losing her mom way too young. Then we got to see how that looked on Sarahs end and how it magnified her own feelings and past traumas.

This book while covering such a heavy topic of loss and a marriage in crisis was so funny too. I loved that they were not outdoorsy people whatsoever but went on this ultimate camping trip (which again shows their dedication to their marriage.) I laughed SO hard out loud when Caleb read his 'die on this hill subjects.'

I had so many emotions reading this but naturally cried for the last chapters and epilogue.

HBY is the QUEEN of epilogues. She gives us such a beautiful picture of their life 10 years from the end of the book. It wraps up everything is such a perfect bow.

I love a romance about a married couple. They're so different from those about single people and more relatable for me. Here we have a couple who have been together since they were young and the story explores what that means and what it's like to have been together for so long.

This isn't my favorite book by this author (Out on a Limb) but it's solid. It's funny and sweet and sexy, everything I look for in a romance.

Highly recommend.

HBY always knows how to break your heart and put it right back together. I loved getting to know more about Sarah and Caleb, and seeing them build on their relationship. Seeing Sarah's past and watching her grow was stunning. I will never understand how HBY can pull off sweet and heartbreaking and sexy all at the same time. Love her so much!

Thank you Random House and HBY for this ARC!!

This book is utter perfection. There aren’t enough words to describe how much I loved this book.

I am also married to my high school sweetheart, and with that comes unique challenges that are often not represented in the romance genre. But Hannah did such an amazing job with this.

This book made me feel all the feels. I couldn’t put it down, but at the same time I never wanted it to be over. This is one of those books that will stay with me forever and I can’t recommend it enough!! 🩵🩵🩵

I can’t believe I was lucky enough to get an ARC of this. As someone who loved Out on a Limb so much, I was so beyond excited to be able to read this early. I laughed and cried literally the entire time. I have no notes. What a beautiful and interesting take on second chance romance. It’s so important to show people that relationships, while seemingly happy on the outside looking in, can also be lacking. And that it takes work to make them better. Sarah and Caleb are the STANDARD.

Not going to lie, I almost wept when I saw the email approving me for this ARC. This book made me truly appreciate the time I have with my friends and family. Often, we take spending time with loved ones for granted, but as soon as I finished this book, I went and hugged my mom.

I adored Win and Bo's story, so I knew I had to read the second book in the series. Imagine my excitement when I found out it featured the marriage-in-trouble trope! I don’t know why, but I absolutely love that trope.

The story follows Sarah and Caleb, who married at 19. Now, years later, they’re questioning whether that was the right decision. While I would have loved Caleb's POV to better understand his character and thought process, the story focuses on Sarah. She feels like she has lost her sense of self, always being someone's daughter, friend, or wife. Sarah never had the chance to figure out who she was on her own, and her resentment grows as she feels Caleb doesn't understand what she’s going through. Caleb, in turn, begins to wonder who Sarah truly is without him and whether their relationship would have lasted if they'd met later in life.

To save their marriage, they attend a couples' therapy retreat—a seven-day wilderness journey involving trekking, camping, and exercises designed to rebuild their bond. Neither Sarah nor Caleb is particularly outdoorsy, which makes the challenge even more daunting.

I’ve never read anything like this, and it was absolutely beautiful. Watching two people rediscover each other and fall back into a deeper love was so touching. The final chapters were deeply emotional for me, but I absolutely loved Sarah and Caleb's journey of self-discovery and reconciliation.

This is a book I know I’ll reread because I adore the author’s writing and the amazing plots she creates.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing - Ballantine for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

*Please check the trigger warnings before reading!*

So excited to receive an ARC of this book. I discovered Hannah Bonam-Young this year and fell in love with her stories. Hannah knows how to write refreshing romance books. I LOVED that this book was about an established couple, who while still very much in love, found that they weren't the best at communicating their needs. But also that it was about a woman, who experienced loss, was still grieving and kind of lost who she was along the way. I think that's something a lot of people can relate to, myself included. I appreciated that it wasn't just about a couple constantly fighting throughout the book over ridiculous things. Their problems and the way they dealt with it felt relatable and realistic.
I loved that it felt like reading two stories with the flashbacks to younger Sarah and Caleb, and how their relationship bloomed. But also seeing everything that they (Sarah, Caleb AND Win) had to experience when Sarah's mom got sick. Ugh, that broke my heart and the more into the story we got, the more I felt for Sarah. Sarah's journey throughout the book was so precious.
And lastly, lets not forget about how amazing both present day and past Caleb are. That man is a giant green flag and I love how he was all in from the beginning.
I cried, I laughed, I swooned. My only complaint is that, Hannah knows how to write some really good spicy scenes, and I would have been inclined to read at least one more 😉

Out in the Woods

I really enjoyed this latest book I read an advanced copy of thanks to #netgalley, Random House Publishing and Hana Bonham-Young, in exchange for my honest review! I really enjoyed all aspects of this book. After leaning on her teenage love during her mother’s ailing health and untimely death due to ALS, once in her thirties, Sarah began to get restless and wondered if she made the wrong choice marrying young. They decide to go on a week long couples retreat and I absolutely loved watching them relearn and remember how to love each other and most importantly why they chose each other in the first place. With the support of her best friend (and non-biological sister) Win, Sarah and Caleb remember who they were together, as well as individuals and show it’s never too late to work on your relationship. Most of all I LOVED that Sarah and Caleb had no interest in having children and that never wavered. It’s not something people use in a book often and I think it was a great little detail that was important to their story and insight to their relationship. This book hits shelves in January and you want to be sure to snag it. It’s a rather easy, 260 something page read. I look forward to looking up Hannah’s other books and reading those as well!

Getting married at the very young age of 19 seems crazy, but sometimes when you know you know. And sometimes, your mom is about to die and you were probably going to get married anyways, so best to do it while she’s alive to see it, right? Which, also crazy, but Sarah and Caleb might just be the lucky ones.

High School sweethearts Caleb and Sarah Linwood have been each other’s other half for a startling seventeen years. They’ve been with each other through it all—awkward phases, heartbreaking losses, and everything in between. Now they’re well into their marriage and financially comfortable thanks to Caleb’s incredibly successful business.

Sarah, in her thirties and feeling a bit stuck, is grasping for something in her life to be proud of, something that’s all her own. So she pulls together a fundraiser gala in her mother’s honor, and tragically, it fails. That is, until Caleb steps in with a fat check at the last minute to save the day. This uninvited and mostly well-intentioned gesture throws a stake into their relationship. To save it they decide to go… hiking?!? As two people who don’t like the outdoors?!? Crazy! But they’ll do anything to save their marriage.

From there they go on an incredible journey, albeit a bit of a roller coaster, of healing and self discovery via the great outdoors, all while supported by some truly strange, wonderful characters.

The only other of HBY’s novels I’ve read (tragically, and trust me I’m about to fix that) is Out on a Limb which is the prequel to Out of the Woods. You don’t need to read the first in order to understand this one, but trust me when I say you should and you won’t regret it. Anyways, despite the pregnancy trope of the first, HBY made me fall head over heels for Win & Bo, and she did the same for me with Sarah & Caleb. HBY has this incredible talent for painting the most beautiful pictures of humans and their complicated lives without making the whole thing feel like something cliché you’ve read before in any other romance.

Out of the Woods took me on a journey. In starting it I didn’t think it would hold any relevance to my life, and boy was I wrong. I learned with these characters, laughed with them, and cried with them. This book will fall into one of my favorites this year along with Out on a Limb.

Hannah Bonam-Young is an amazing and incredibly underrated writer. Don’t let the theme of the book scare you away, because I swear you’ll love it anyways.

Thank you infinitely to the author & publisher via NetGalley for this ARC!

I ATE this book up! Like oh my goodness, this may have been the best Hannah book I've ever read??

Literally dived headfirst into this book and it was utter perfection. The romance, the plot, the spice, everything was top tier. Hannah has a way of writing books and characters that you absolutely fall in love with, and this book was no exception. It was everything and I love it so much.

The way I need to read this book over and over again because I cannot get enough of it.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!

Bonam-Young has done it again! The masterful way she weaves a tender story while remaining realistic is so special. The story of a long married couple trying to reevaluate their past and future while reaffirming their love was truly not a plot I’ve ever seen before. The author tapped into something fresh, a rarity.

This was such a sweet and fun read. I gave it four stars because it felt a bit like the conflict was resolved with minimal effort. I would have loved to see more glimpses into the therapy sessions and their conversations about their future. Because of this it was more of a lighthearted read considering it’s a fairly heavy topic. I LOVED the first book in this series, and this was a nice follow up. I would definitely recommend this to friends.

this was absolute perfection from hannah as always! if you want a romance but with an already married couple, this is IT!! finally found it!

I was drawn to the premise of this book - a long married woman, struggling to find her purpose in her marriage. The book didn't really live up to what I hoped. First the woman is only 32, having married very young, so it was essentially the standard age-range of young romances. Also, the marriage was never at risk to begin with; the couple was still ferociously in love. It was less about the marriage needing a reboot, and more about the woman finding a career to fulfill her. Still, it kept my attention.

A very heart-warming exploration of both grief after loss and how marriage takes work, no matter how much you love each other.

I loved both Sarah and Caleb, how you could tell they loved each other and the true connection they have after loving each other for so many years, through true hardships.

Caleb is the nerdy man of my dreams. I love a man with glasses, who just wants to love his woman and is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her.

Their week-long camping/couples therapy trip was such a great setting for this story! I loved the cast of characters we were introduced to as well.

To say I cried reading this is an understatement. I related to Sarah in so many ways. Losing a parent in your formative years is life-altering and I can't imagine also having been my parent's caretaker to some extent. The portrayal of life after that type of loss, how it can change you, how it can make you afraid.. ouf, that cut to the bone for me. It mirrors my experience.

There are some truly heartfelt and emotional conversations that take place in this book, and Hannah did such a wonderful job with them.

The reason I didn't rate this 5 stars is that I felt like there was a bit of a lack of intimacy when it came to the spice. I think I was expecting something more emotional considering this book is about a marriage in crisis and these two reconnecting.. but the spice was more of the spicy/sexy side, and there was a bit of a lack of emotional connection for me. (this could just be personal preference)

I also wish that we could have explored Sarah's own personal journey a tad more.. it felt like it was maybe getting somewhere, but then the story change course and it didn't really circle back to her in a way that felt meaningful.

that said, I still absolutely loved this book! I think I will reread the finished copy in 2025 and see if my feelings have changed.. I always find it difficult to truly formulate my thoughts after I binge through a book, so maybe a slower read through it will make me see things differently.

oh and we get the best little moments of both Bo & Win and I lived for every second we got of them on page.

Hannah is a fantastic writer and I can't wait for her future releases!