This one was a goodie.
Date read: 09/02/25
Author: Hannah Bonam-Young
Title: Out of the Woods
New read ✔️
Re-read
Tropes: First love, high-school sweethearts, marriage in crisis, self-rediscovery, forced proximity, dual timelines
Content warnings: Death of a parent (depicted), terminal illness depiction, grief and loss, injury resulting in hospitalisation
Spice level: 2 chili 🌶️
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis according to Goodreads:
High school sweethearts Sarah and Caleb Linwood have always been a sure thing. For the past seventeen years, they have had each other’s backs through all of life’s ups and downs, achievements, losses, stages, and phases.
But Sarah has begun to wonder... Who is she without her other half?
When she decides to take on a project of her own, a fundraising gala in memoriam of her late mother, Sarah wants nothing more than to prove to herself—and to everyone else—that she doesn’t need Caleb’s help to succeed. She’s still her mother’s daughter, after all. Independent and capable.
That is until the event fails and Caleb uninvitedly steps in to save the day.
The rift that follows unearths a decade of grievances between them and doubts begin to grow. Are they truly the same people they were when they got married at nineteen? Are they supposed to be?
In a desperate attempt to fix what they fear is near breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to join a grueling hiking trip intended to guide couples through rough patches.
What follows is a life-affirming comedy of errors as two nature-averse people fight their way out of the woods in order to find their way back to their roots.
Thoughts:
Let me start out by prefacing, I don’t really have a lot of faith in the longevity of high-school sweetheart relationships. Not that there aren’t successful ones; I just don’t think the odds of them lasting, or being healthy even if they do last, are that great.
Who we are in high school, at such a young age where the world is still so newly accessible to us, is often so different from the people we become as we grow older. The things you learn and experience from the time you start high school, until the time you leave, are enormous. Even the things you learn and experience from your first year out of high school and 5 years later. I have changed and grown so much since I was 18, even more so since I was 13, just starting high school. To imagine being with one person, that entire period of time and no one else, is unfathomable to me. But in ‘Out of the Woods’, I understand why it works. Sarah and Caleb are the exception.
What I loved most about this book, and what I love most about Hannah Bonam-Young as an author in general, is that she write realistic stories about people you could truly imagine knowing. The level of representation she embodies in her characters across all her books, adds so much depth to her narratives. In this case, what I found refreshing, was a young couple, who have been together over half their lives, who truly love each other, struggling to communicate and decide to do something to fix it. The level of internal reflection and outward communication that they go through throughout this book is so beautiful to me.
I also love how Sarah and Caleb are a child-free couple and stay that way. I thought that was incredibly refreshing to see within the contemporary romance genre, in which so many novels end with a baby on the way in the epilogue. They like their life as is, and don’t compromise on that.
While this is a romance novel and Sarah and Caleb are the main couple, it also felt like a book more about identity. The biggest theme throughout, for me at least, was identity within relationships, and how important it is to have your own. Sarah felt lost in Caleb’s identity, and her journey to rediscover her own passions and interests was just as, if not more, important than reigniting the passion within their marriage.
I really loved this. If you’ve seen (or read) the book/movie ‘Happiness for Beginners’, this kind of has a similar vibe. Outdoorsy therapy where people rediscover themselves. It was a good time.