Book Review | A Girl’s Guide to the Outback by Jessica Kate

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 current 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.