Review: "Fish Out of Water" by Katie Ruggle

Fish Out of Water by Katie Ruggle
Published February 2024 via Sourcebooks Casablanca
★★★★

Dahlia isn't made for the woods, but when her sister is in trouble, Dahlia will do anything to get to her—even if that requires tracking down a reclusive (hot, young) mountain man to be her wilderness guide. (Oh, the hardship.)

I'd like all of my romance novels from here on out to take place in the woods, please and thank you. Between that and Dahlia's very cheerful willingness to go out of her comfort zone (see: the vast majority of the book taking place in the woods), I had a fine old time reading this. I acknowledge and accept my predictability in being drawn to yet another hiking book, but...keep them coming, please.

Do note that the book requires a willingness to suspend disbelief. How Dahlia manages to stay quite so sunshine in this very grumpy-sunshine book (more on that on a moment) even when her sister is missing and perhaps worse defies all logic; later revelations about Winston, while certainly not impossible, feel unlikely without a bit more fleshing out of his character. Suspending disbelief is not my strength, but I make exceptions, and I guess romance-in-the-woods-with-a-game-heroine is one of them. Dahlia's game-ness is really important here—she makes no bones about the fact that she doesn't know the first thing about hiking and camping, but she never complains or loses her cool over it, because a bit of discomfort isn't her biggest priority.

Now, the trope: it's trope-ing. I'm on record as being, well, over the proliferation of a small number of tropes in recent romance, but it doesn't get in the way here, perhaps because I haven't read all that much of this particular trope of late or perhaps because it seems more realistic than some other tropes (easier to imagine a talkative person winning over an outwardly surly person than it is to imagine quite so much fake dating as I see in romance novels). It also helps a lot that Winston is never really all that grumpy—shy and reserved, yes, but never snappish.

Dahlia's sunshine-ness goes a bit far at times, though—for example, I struggled to believe just how much she manages to relax and flirt and take her time and so on when she's worried about her sister. (To be fair, the situation is unclear—for much of the book we don't know if Rose is dead in a ditch following her SOS or if the SOS was more along the lines of 'I'm going through some things and want you to process them with me'.) I also find it hard to believe that there's not a word of concern about minor things like body odor after multiple days of strenuous hiking and...other activities...because although that sort of thing is definitely not romance-novel sexy, it is hiking-and-camping realistic (and...I'm a bit literal sometimes).

Still, if you can suspend some of that disbelief, this is fun and hit the spot. I don't reread romance all too often, but I'm sticking this on a just-in-case mental list of 'books that might re-entertain me when I'm dreaming of the woods and want something light'.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.