A Girl’s Guide to the Outback takes Kimberly and Sam from Jessica Kate’s debut, Love and Other Mistakes, and transplants them to Sam’s family farm in the Australian Outback. Sam is convinced he’s a failure, so quits Wildfire, the youth mission he founded. When he gets home, he finds his sister Jules with a broken leg, and the farm under threat of bankruptcy.
Wildfire doesn’t go well without him either.
Kimberly is packed off to Australia to convince Sam to return to the program. Sam won’t return until he knows the farm will be okay, so Kimberly is bribed to stay and help even though she and Sam go together like oil and water. She offers her financial and management smarts to help in the hope she can get Sam back to Wildfire.
I grew up in a farming community, but Kimberly’s research showed me there is a lot more to farming than I knew (especially Aussie farming. New Zealand doesn’t have the same fire and flood risks as Queensland).
Reading this against the backdrop of the Australian fires had a sobering affect on what is otherwise a fun romantic comedy.
And it is funny. As a Kiwi, I found several giggles and groans in the Aussie cultural references as Kimberly settles in to life in ‘Straya. Mick drinks kombucha, which shows he’s a better person than me—I’ve only tried it once, and it was nasty. Sam wears Stubbies, a fashion staple of rural Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s:
Yes. That’s a fashion item that should have stayed in the 1970s (and if you think that photo is scary, click through to the website, which also offers an enlarged view and a back view).
Kimberly packs a picnic basket and includes:
“Canadian bacon—known in Australia simply as ‘bacon,’ plus Vegemite and Weetbix cereal for a traditional Australian touch.”
So if I call it “bacon” and Americans call it “Canadian bacon”, what’s the stuff on the American fast-food menus that they call bacon? Or don’t I want to know?
Also, while I do know some people who eat Weetbix with butter and Marmite (the Kiwi version of Vegemite, and we won’t get into any arguments about which tastes better, thank you very much), I don’t know anyone who’d eat Weetbix, Vegemite, and bacon at the same time. Well, I hope I don’t.
A Girl’s Guide to the Outback has all the wit and sass of Love and Other Mistakes, plus a healthy dose of ‘Straya.
The Australian setting means it also has ample opportunity to showcase the highs and lows, from brown snakes and early-morning avian wake-up calls to the beauty of the Outback and the Gold Coast beaches.
But there are some serious life lessons hidden in the banter.
Both Sam and Kim have mistakes from their past they need to overcome, both for their own sakes and to draw them together as a couple. Jules (Sam’s sister) has her own issues with Mike, the guy she broke up with years ago because she wanted to stay on the farm and he wanted to move to the coast. It’s fun watching both couples fall apart, get together, and work through their issues. It’s also a reminder of the power of God … when we get out of His way.
Recommended for anyone looking for a fun romantic comedy in a unique setting.
Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Jessica Kate
Australian author Jessica Kate writes inspirational romances that are fun, sassy and real. Jess is a screenwriting groupie, co-host of the StoryNerds vlog and podcasts, and her favorite place to be – apart from Mum and Dad’s back deck – is a theme park.
She’s traveled North America and Australia, and samples her favorite pasta wherever she goes – but the best (so far) is still the place around the corner from her corporate day job as a training developer.
She loves watching sit-coms with her housemates and being a leader in a new church plant.
You can find Jessica Kate online at:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Podcast | Twitter
About A Girl’s Guide to the Outback
How far will a girl go to win back a guy she can’t stand? This funny, sweet, and romantic story proves that opposites do attract—and that God has a sense of humor.
Samuel Payton is a passionate youth pastor in Virginia, but below the surface, he’s still recovering from the blow of a failed business and insecurities he can’t shake. His coworker, start-up expert Kimberly Foster, is brilliant, fearless, and capable, but years of personal rejection have left her defensive and longing for a family. Two people have never been more at odds—or more attracted to one another. And every day at work, the sparks sure do fly.
When Kimberly’s ambitious plans for Sam’s ministry butt up against his risk-averse nature, Sam decides that obligations to family trump his work for the church. He quits the ministry and heads home to Australia to help his sister, Jules, save her struggling farm. As Kimberly’s grand plans flounder, she is forced to face the truth: that no one can replace Sam. Together they strike up a deal: If Kimberly comes to work on Jules’s dairy farm and lends her business brains to their endeavor, then maybe—just maybe—Sam will reconsider his future with the church.
As Kimberly tries her hand at Australian farm life, she learns more about herself than she could’ve ever expected. Meanwhile Sam is forced to re-evaluate this spunky woman he thought he already knew. As foes slowly morph into friends, they wonder if they might be something even more. But when disaster strikes the farm, will Sam find it within himself to take a risk that could lead to love? And will Kimberly trust God with her future?
Find A Girl’s Guide to the Outback online at:
Amazon | ChristianBook | Goodreads | Koorong | Kobo
You can read the introduction to A Girl’s Guide to the Outback below:
