Review: "Out of the Woods" by Hannah Bonam-Young

Out of the Woods by Hannah Bonam-Young
Published January 2025 via Dell
★★

Sarah and Caleb are happily married—but Sarah's not happy in general. And so they find themselves at a wilderness retreat therapy program, trying to save their marriage...

Well. Sort of.

I read this because I'd just read Into the Woods and I thought it would be funny to read Into the Woods and Out of the Woods back to back (and yes, I am that shallow). Other than the "hiking trip" part of things, the description didn't sound particularly up my alley (though the cover is cute), but "hiking trip" goes a long way for me and books.

I suspect this falls into the very general "second chance romance" trope, though that's not particularly accurate—one of the things Sarah and Caleb are clear about is that they are happily married. They like each other, they have no major differences of opinion, they communicate pretty well already, and they still want to bang each other's brains out on the regular. And I suppose I'm left wondering what they're doing on this hiking trip. Sarah clearly needs therapy (not a dig, obviously; many of us could use some therapy) and some direction, and couples therapy is never a bad suggestion either—but it doesn't take a group hiking trip to do that. Sarah talks a big game about needing to stand on her own two feet, and succeed or fail without being propped up by Caleb, and that's great! It's a great goal for her to work on in long-term therapy. In theory it could be something for her to practice in the woods.

But in the woods, what Sarah standing on her own two feet looks like is: Sarah whines about having to hike on the hiking trip she's chosen, and insists that Caleb drag her across the ground to their tent.* Neither of them knows how to put up a tent, so Caleb learns. Sarah gets blisters, and Caleb tends to them. Sarah skins her knees, and Caleb bandages them and carries her back to camp. Sarah gets deep into discussing their relationship with other campers, and then gets huffy and petty at the thought that Caleb might have done the same. And when (vaguesauce to avoid spoilers) Caleb can't step up to the plate near the end of the book, Sarah immediately crumbles, and other people step in to hug her and remind her how to adult. All of that is fine in and of itself, of course; realistically, not everyone is happy in the relative wilderness, very few people handle things entirely alone, and it's perfectly reasonable to be not okay with blood or to need support when shit hits the fan. But for all that Sarah calls the trip life-changing, as far as I can tell, between beginning and end nothing has changed except that she recognizes a need for therapy and a purpose, which she kind of knew already. A week in the woods isn't enough for Sarah to suddenly go from leaning on Caleb for everything to being completely independent, but it would be enough time for her to be assigned some do-it-yourself tasks (put up the tent, build a fire, learn to treat an injury, be given any responsibility at all when Caleb can't step up)...none of which is ever suggested.

It's actually quite nice that Caleb and Sarah still like each other—I'm not much a fan of "they hate each other until they realize that they actually love each other" plots (I'm still bad at suspending disbelief), and it's always nice to come out of a romance feeling that the hero doesn't have a number of unresolved red flags. (The bar, folks, it is low!) It does limit the tension quite a bit, though. Instead we get some limited tension from some of the other campers, plus of course Sarah wrestling with some things from her past. It's all valid (and actually very short on wilderness therapy, though that's probably just as well because it turns out that I enjoy irritating-camper characters more when the POV is somebody who is not one of those irritating-camper characters), but it doesn't really feel like enough to round out the book, which might be why we get so many scenes of Sarah and Caleb telling each other how much they love and respect each other and how much they want to bang.

This was going to be a low three stars for me, but then I got to the wish-fulfillment end end and Sarah had her second "standing up for herself" moment (great!) that is also the second instance of her publicly regressing to her pettiest twelve-year-old self (less great) and everyone cheering her on (even less great), and I couldn't anymore.

*This sounds—as someone who has done a lot of hiking, and also worked out on rusty muscles and felt the aches and pains later—way worse than just limping over to the tent, incidentally.