Out on a Limb was one of my favourite romances books of this year so I was really excited to read a companion novel that tells Sarah and Caleb's story. Out of the Woods follows Sarah and Caleb as they navigate growing up and changing over the course of their long relationship. I really enjoyed reading this perspective of a relationship in a romance book as its not one that is written about much. There is lots of emotion packed into this one and I felt it was done really well. It is a beautifully written book with lovable and relatable characters and an emotional and romantic story.

An absolute fantastic companion novel to "Out on a Limb". A second chance romance without any uneccessary misscomunication, we love to see it! Hannah created such an healthy relationship everyone should use as an example!

I had all the feelings!!! This book really hit home for me and made me deal with some of my own thoughts and feelings. It was so beautifully written - Sarah and Caleb might just be my new fave book couple. I didn’t want the book to end! You can never go wrong with a book by Hannah Bonam-Young

Honestly, such an amazing book I absolutely ADORED these characters. I will most definitely recommend this book to everyone to read as it has so many loved tropes like found family and second chances. I wanted to thank NetGalley for the opportunity to get the eARC copy of this book.

Loved this book and left me wanting more. I truly enjoyed reading this book and I want more more more. I loved the characters and storyline as it continued through the book .

Loved it! Sheds light on how things can get in certain points of marriage and when one feels like they’ve lost themselves. I adored this read and was super grateful to be chosen to read it! 4.5 ⭐ from me! Hannah knows how to write a beautiful book!

Thank you for the opportunity to read this eARC ahead of release.

I’ll start by saying that a lot of people will love this. It’s a very good story with tropes that are popular and well loved - second chance, childhood sweethearts. I will recommend this whole heartedly to friends and other readers because it has so many great ingredients. It just wasn’t the book for me. I struggled with the subject matter of a relationship in crisis and found the main character, Sarah, to be childish and hard to warm to. Personal preference though as I have loved Hannah’s other book, Out on a Limb.

4.5 stars I absolutely loved Out of the Woods! Out on a limb is a firm favourite of mine and Hannah Bonam-Young didn't disappoint with this book either.
I really love Hannah's writing style, her books are so true and realistic.
I really liked Sarah and Caleb from when they were introduced in Out on a limb, so I was so excited to read this book.
Sarah and Caleb have been together a long time and they have a rift between them, they decide to go on a week long couples camping retreat to try to mend the relationship. It was so relatable and true in how you can sometimes be so comfortable in a relationship and not realising someone isn't as happy anymore or not bringing up issues that are bothering you because you don't want to argue.
I loved seeing how Caleb and Sarah first got together and how they were when they were younger and then getting to see through the book in the present, them slowly coming back together and working through the issues.
Sarah has gone through so much in her life, she really is an amazing character and how Hannah wrote her grief was done so beautifully.
Sarah was so relatable in the way she was trying to find her purpose and what she wanted to do in the future and just feeling lost. I think we've all had phases in our life where we don't know what we're doing with our lives and feeling lost. Sarah is also for all us book girlies she loves her books.
I absolutely loved Sarah and Caleb's relationship and they truly are an amazing couple.
I loved getting to see Bo and Win as well, the found family of all these characters is truly what makes the book so good and they are always their for each other.
Thank you to Bedford Square Publishers and Netgalley and Hannah Bonam-Young for the ARC!

4.5 ⭐️

Firstly thank you to @netgalley & @bedfordsq.publishers for the early ARC!!! If you know me then you know Out on a Limb is not only one of my favourite romance books of 2024 but of all time, so you can imagine my reaction when I got approved for this 😭💚

“The comfort of having my family in one place. How glad I am to know and be know by them all. The relief of sensing that it will all be okay. The knowledge that we’ll all be here for one another if it ever isn’t.”

Win, Bo, Sarah & Caleb are my found family. I felt so comforted reading this story and it felt good to be back with my soul characters. I knew this one was going to be good when the authors note had me choking up, one thing about Hannah Bonam- Young she knows how to get you right in the feels.

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

There was so many times throughout this I wanted to jump in the pages and give Sarah a big hug, what she went through with her mother is something no one should ever have to experience. Thank god she had Caleb by her side every step of the way 🫂. I don’t think I’ll ever look at paper airplanes and not think of Sarah and Caleb 🥹

I loved the flashbacks and how we got to see more of Sarah and Caleb in their younger years and of course I loved reading every single interaction they had with Bo & Win!!! This book balances humour, depth (exploring topics of grief) and fun perfectly!

“We’re just getting started.”

SARAH AND CALEB 🥵😍

I love love love all of HBY books and honestly binged this in a few hours.

I NEED MORE HBY BOOKS

Hannah Bonam Young will forever write love stories that carve their own place into my heart, and Caleb and Sarah were no different

A marriage in crisis (lower case c for crisis don't worry) leads this couple who we know well from Out on a Limb, to explore their relationship deeper in a week long wilderness hike

Sarah, lost in her own life, and Caleb, securely attached to the comfortable life they've made, decide to delve into how much they along with their relationship have changed since they were high school sweethearts

There's heartbreak, love, and a lot of laughs - HBY is the queen of writing the soft boy for us girls (and her girls) who desperately need that soft kind of love

Thank you to Bedford Square Publishers and Netgalley for this arc!

Out of the woods follows Sarah & Caleb’s relationship as they attend a programme for couples to reconnect when they find something isn’t right in their marriage. I enjoyed following the journey but I did find it lacked something in the book, it just wasn’t as exciting or as fast paced as the first book, Out on a limb. I really enjoy Hannah’s writing style and the closeness and foundations of her characters. I have rated 3 stars as it just wasn’t a book I found myself excited to carry on reading. This is a personal opinion as I think many people will really enjoy this and I am glad I’ve read it and I’m extremely grateful to be chosen to read it. The last quarter of the book was the best when things started to get a little more interesting for me. I would read more from the author and have more books lined up. Maybe because I loved Out on a limb so much this one didn’t stand a chance, I would recommend reading though.

4.5 stars rounded up.

After reading and adoring Out on a Limb, I have been counting down the days until I could read Out of the Woods. A million thank you’s you to NetGalley and Bedford Square Publishers for providing me with an eARC so I could read it a couple of months early!

Out of the Woods follows Sarah (Win from Out on a Limb’s best friend) and her husband Caleb. The couple are high school sweethearts who have been married for 17 years. However, they’ve drifted apart and seem to want different things. In an effort to save their marriage, they join a week-long wilderness expedition to help them reconnect.

I absolutely loved the setting of this book; the camp setting was so fun! I feel like if this book was the couple just going to “regular” therapy in their hometown, it wouldn’t have been as engaging.

As for the characters, I really enjoyed getting to know Sarah and Caleb better after meeting them in Out on a Limb. Their relationship was so raw and real, and I loved reading about their love story in flashback chapters, as well as seeing them find their way back to each other in the present. The characters went on such a journey as both individuals and as a couple, and there was so much growth and development.

I found Sarah in particular very relatable. She struggles with getting older and feeling a bit lost in life, wondering what she’s supposed to be doing. I feel like this is something so many people experience at some point in their lives, and it made me feel seen. She’s also a kindle girlie!

It was also refreshing to read about a couple who didn’t want children. As someone who also doesn’t want children, I don’t often see this represented in books.

Hannah Bonam-Young always handles difficult subject matter with so much thought and care, and this book did a great job of exploring grief, loss, toxic parental relationships, and feeling lost in life. There was also so much love in this book, and not just between Sarah and Caleb. This book showed love in all of its forms, and it was so beautiful to read.

I’m so glad we got a decent amount of Bo and Win from Out on a Limb in this book. They are my favourite of Hannah Bonam-Young’s characters, and I particularly loved reading about the friendship between Win and Sarah.

The only reason I’m giving this book 4.5 stars instead of 5 is that the conflict was resolved a little too easily for me. Lots of issues can be solved with communication and honesty, but I could have done with the characters being in the conflict stage for a little longer.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It had me feeling every emotion, and I finished the book bawling my eyes out. The epilogue was perfect, and I felt so proud of the characters for where they ended up. I can’t wait to read whatever this author writes next!

Hannah Bonam-Young is an absolutely fantastic author, I have yet to get through one of her books without tearing up. Hannah beautifully crafts a relationship that is so real and powerful its impossible not to relate to, from the author's note on the first page, the reader immediately is set up for a story of growth and self exploration, which is Hannah's absolute expertise. The beauty of the dual timeline in this book expertly presented the reality of Sarah and Caleb's marriage in crisis, allowing the reader to see the relationship from the full picture, rather than having it told to them. An absolute pleasure to read.

Hannah Bonam-Young writes romance books like no one else! After Out on a Limb was able to make me love the Accidental Pregnancy Trope, I fell in love with the Marriage in Crisis Trope in the second book. Such a great love story, that isn't like other romance books, with great characters and amazing writing.

This was a book of two halves for me, I loved Caleb and all of Sarah's family and I'm so intrigued by Aunt June (would love to see more of her in the future!). Caleb was such a cutie and definitely was done dirty by Sarah for a lot of this book! I didn't find their relationship difficulties to be particularly trying, Sarah honestly just seemed to need a good talking to and then to be encouraged to talk with Caleb (stick them in a cupboard or something ;) ).

Whilst I certainly value therapy and therapeutic practices as a mental health professional, it irritated me how shallow and surface level their issues were and the time that was given to them in the book, my professional background might colour my perceptions here though! I also struggled to reconcile this with the romance and sometimes intense and out of the blue steamy scenes. This was especially tricky as it was very introspective and not a lot was going on!

I enjoyed the drama of the end of the book although I think more pages could have been dedicated to this (especially recovery and their life going forward) and I wish this drama had been spread more through the book!

Overall it wasn't my favourite but I didn't dislike it. I will try HBY again but I reserve judgment still as to whether their work is for me!

3 stars

Thanks to Bedford Square & Netgalley for my e-ARC! xx

Really great seeing Win and Bo again and to get some insight into Sarah and Caleb. Really enjoyed the dynamic but this wasn’t quite as amazing as Out on a Limb is. However HBY has written a sweet and enjoyable novel.

Hannah Bonam-Young, you've done it again. As an already huge fan of Hannah's books with Out on a limb being one of my favourites, I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed by Out of The Woods. Hannah has such a gracious way of writing about romance in a real life, relatable way.

In this book we follow Sarah and Caleb going through some relationship turmoil but finding their way back to each other and reconnecting. I think the emotions and experiences in this book is something we can all relate to within our lives and relationships. This book made me laugh, smile and feel really emotional but overall the perfect combination for a *chefs kiss* five star read. I can't wait to read more of Hannah's books and meet more characters.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I highly recommend!!! Loved getting to know more of Sarah and Caleb after Out on a limb, especially as they have so much history. So nice to also see Win and Bo again and get to know the new characters. The location was so perfect! Thank you NetGalley

This was PHENOMENAL!!!! Out on a limb is one of my favorite books EVER, and seeing the announcement for this one had me giddy with joy!!

This is also for the girls who have gone through more than others at a young age. We are different because of how quickly we had to grow up. Sarah always felt like she was doing too little, being too little, or just wasn't enough. Since her mom died young, she had to grow up fast. With traumatic life events, sometimes there's no room to "dream". No room to find yourself because all you're trying to do is survive.

I felt how personal this story was to her, and it’s special when an author can literally make their readers feel the soul they put into their art. Caleb and Sarah’s journey was beautiful, from young love to a married couple fighting to relearn each other after years of taking the other for granted.

The thing with Hannah’s books, they are so deeply intimate and heartfelt that you will find yourself crying over it all. I genuinely feel safe with her writing and storytelling and finish each book dying to reread it immediately! The dual timeline with this one was very emotional and beautifully done, I just….HANNAH REALLY DID THE THING. DAMN!!!!!