A married couple joins a week-long wilderness expedition to help them reconnect in this heartfelt companion novel to the viral TikTok sensation <Out on a Limb.<

High school sweethearts Sarah and Caleb Linwood have always been a sure thing. For the past seventeen years, they have had each other&rsquo;s backs through all of life&rsquo;s ups and downs.

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&mdash;and to everyone else&mdash;that she doesn&rsquo;t need Caleb&rsquo;s help to succeed. She&rsquo;s still her mother&rsquo;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 and doubts. Are they truly the same people they were when they got married at nineteen?&nbsp;Are they supposed to be?

In a desperate attempt to fix what they fear is breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to get out of their comfort zone and join a grueling, week-long 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.

Autorentext

Hannah Bonam-Young is the author of Next of Kin, Next to You, and Out on a Limb. Hannah writes romances featuring a cast of diverse, disabled, marginalized, and LGBTQIA+ folks wherein swoon-worthy storylines blend with the beautiful, messy, and challenging realities of life. When not reading or writing romance you can find her having living room dance parties with her kids or planning any occasion that warrants a cheese board. Originally from Ontario, Canada, she lives with her childhood friend turned husband, Ben, two kids, and bulldog near Niagara Falls on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.

Klappentext

**“Absolute, utter perfection.”―Chloe Liese, USA Today bestselling author of Only and Forever

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • AN ELLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A married couple joins a week-long wilderness expedition to help them reconnect in this heartfelt companion novel to the viral TikTok sensation Out on a Limb.**

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.

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 memory 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 and doubts. 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 breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to get out of their comfort zones and 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.

Leseprobe
One

Present Day

My mother was religious in the same way that leggings are pants. By that I mean whenever times were desperate or for comfort. Never one to shy away from a passive-­aggressive “bless her heart” or an exasperated “lord give me strength,” my mom mostly expressed her beliefs in empty platitudes that I often flat-­out dismissed.

But she did teach me to pray. Not before bed every night, as her parents so rigidly instructed her, or at a Sunday mass, or to apologize for a laundry list of transgressions that one didn’t need to feel all that sorry for. Instead, my mother, the no-­nonsense woman that she was, taught me to treat my one-­way calls to the big man in the sky as more of a crisis hotline and less as a suggestion box. “God’s got enough problems,” she’d said. “Don’t waste his time with things you can handle yourself.” Or, at the very least, have the saints handle.

And so, over the course of many years, I discovered what qualified as worthy of God’s attention. Like the time my mom’s shitty Ford Mondeo broke down on the highway during a snowstorm, an hour from home without a pay phone in sight. Or, when my aunt June’s—­who’s not actually my blood-­relative but rather my mom’s best friend that we shared an apartment with—­boyfriend started throwing shit in the adjoining room. Or when my best friend and daughter of Aunt June, Win, didn’t come home right away after swim practice one time and we’d watched a little too much Dateline that week for comfort. Then, of course, when Mom’s doctors said there was nothing left to be done but to make the most of the time she had left. After that, we started to pray a lot.

Desperate prayer is the only kind I’ve ever known.

After Mom passed, I relied on my own instincts to tell me when it was appropriate to pull on that heavenly pair of tin cans tied together with angel’s-­harp string. I’d shut my eyes tight and ask something bigger than myself to intervene. A force of some kind. Some deity. Some all-­powerful, all-­knowledgeable, all-­capable thing. Something my mother called God. Something I haven’t been bold enough to name for myself just yet.

And even though I’ve never seen an answered prayer, I still find myself giving it a go. Rarely and only when there’s nothing left to be done, just as Mom taught me. Like right now, for example. Because this event, the gala that I’d decided to host in honor of my late, brilliant mother, is about to fail spectacularly. And there’s nothing I can do to fix it.

“Sarah? Are you back here?” Win, my lifelong best friend, turns the corner of the darkened hallway where I’ve hidden myself away. Her black hair is tied into a low bun, curtain bangs framing either side of her face. The squiggly horizontal lines she gets between her brows when her nose bunches up with worry are visible from here. The moment she sees me leaned against the wall, her shoulders slump and she picks up the bottom of her floor length, purple silk gown to hurry over to me at the far end of the corridor.

“You caught me,” I whine pathetically, wishing there was somewhere left inside of myself to hide.

“I did.” She looks me over, head to toe, with increasing anxiety behind her eyes. “Caleb sent me to find you. The auction is almost over.” After growing up in the same home as Win for our entire childhoods, we know each other at a level deeper than most friends would. Closer to sisters, I’d like to think. Twins maybe, given that we’re the same age. And so, because of that, I know that Win’s tone, the slight hesitancy in her voice when she said the word auction, means that I was right to be back here praying for a miracle. We’re still nowhere near to our fundraising goal—­no nearer than we were when I snuck away.

In quick succession I clear my throat, shake my head, and look up to the ceiling—­all attempts …