A Girl’s Guide to the Outback

By: Jessica Kate

Narrated by: Lauren Woodward

Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

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?

“Original, heartwarming, full of lovable characters amid a fast-paced plot. Romance readers will love the bicontinental adventure of a sassy, strong-willed woman going across the ocean to win back the Aussie man who holds the key to her career dreams - but also, as it turns out, so much more.” (Melissa Ferguson, author of The Dating Charade)

“Combining breathtaking realness, natural humor, and scorching romantic chemistry that leaps off the page, author Jessica Kate has given us a thoroughly modern tale about risk, acceptance, and the true meaning of home. Crackling with electricity and overflowing with heart, A Girl’s Guide to the Outback is one you won’t want to miss. Fair dinkum!” (Bethany Turner, award-winning author of The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck and Wooing Cadie McCaffrey)

“A Girl's Guide to the Outback is as charming as it is hilarious! Jessica Kate’s fresh and unique voice is both humorous and endearing, leaving you no choice but to abandon all personal responsibilities so you can devour every page. This is one of those stories that leaves you looking around for the characters after you’ve finished reading, because they just had to be real.” (Betsy St. Amant, author of The Key to Love, coming October 2020)

Contemporary inspirational romance novel. Includes characters featured in Jessica Kate’s debut Love and Other Mistakes but can be heard as a standalone

Includes discussion questions for book clubs

©2020 Jessica Kate (P)2020 Thomas Nelson

Love this book

I grabbed this audiobook for a road trip after reading A Girls Guide to the Outback earlier this year. Even after reading the book I still get so lost in the story!

The only thing I wish is that the audio part would have been edited before making it live.

All in all a great, fun, rom-com that will have you on your toes at the beginning of each chapter.

Great story. Horrible Editor.

Who the heck edited this. So many retakes of the same sections left in. Even a section where the voice actor tries a sentence 3x and down talks herself before trying again. Literally could not have proof listened the story at all before release. Good enough story that I listened all the way though anyway but I’m still disappointed.

Editing Ruined a Good Story

I’m going to try and return this. Since it was part of a 2 for 1 deal, I’m pretty sure I won’t get any money or half credit back – and that’s ok. I never want to listen to this again. This is the worst produced audiobook I’ve ever listened to out of the… *quickly checks spread sheet* 365 books I’ve listened to.

HOWEVER it isn’t all bad. I liked the story, the cover is nice, the narrator wasn’t all bad. But the editing… this should not have been released. I paid to listen to almost 9 hours of this. But Thomas Nelson publishing needs to pay someone to listen to the finished audio before releasing to the public. A high-schooler off for the summer, perhaps? They could jot down the specific times where things repeat or where a more obvious pause break needs to be inserted, and probably they’d work for cheap! I lost count of how many mistakes there were, and the repeated lines increased in the second half of the book. I started focusing on how frequent the mistakes were that I couldn’t focus on the story.

Narrator: this wasn’t a great performance. With some practice, I think Ms. Woodward could be a good narrator. If she could work on 1) coming up with at least a few different voices to help distinguish between characters, that’d help tell them apart – frequently if my mind drifted for a moment I couldn’t tell who was talking. 2) if she could read the non-dialogue parts like she were relating events to a friend, rather than presenting a book report to a class, that’d help keep a listener engaged. I think she did well with dialogue and the accents, and her voice is pleasant.

Story: I liked the story setting in US and Australia. I enjoy an enemies to lovers story. There are always warning signs for me when criticism or contempt show up in a fictional romantic relationship – but eventually the characters did get past that. I enjoyed Kim and Sam identifying new qualities they appreciated about each other, and slowly falling for the other.

It is a Christian romance book. The role Christianity played in the story was more about the profession of being a Christian and a youth pastor while tossing around a message about “God’s love,” which is definitely positive, just... I was hoping for something a little deeper like the characters sharing personal spiritual experiences and meanings.

I’d be interested in other books from this author because the core story was sweet. In its current form, this audiobook is very difficult to listen to largely due to no one correcting/editing the final product for basic quality control.

Editing off

The digital editing is off and distracting- there are repeated segments and comments from the narrator.

Great story! Not great editing.

I really enjoyed this story. I loved how the writer dealt with some difficult subjects in a beautiful way.
The performance was mostly good, but pronunciation and accents bugged me *just* a bit very occasionally.
These things wouldn't have bothered me at all though if the audio had been edited properly... As it was, there were lots of places where I felt like I had to get acclimated to what was going on in the story because there wasn't even really a breath between scene changes. There were also a lot of places where the reader caught herself either misreading or not liking how she read something and then reading it over again. At one point in particular, I think it happened three or four times. She sounded pretty frustrated with herself, going "Aaaah no!" and then sort of muttering to herself how she wanted/needed to read it, and then actually reading it again. It was an interesting little behind-the-scenes type peek... but it should have been edited out of the finished audio book.
I'm struggling to know how many stars to rate this one because the story was great, and I enjoyed the reader too... just found that the poor editing made many parts hard to follow. Overall I really enjoyed it though.

A fun escape

I enjoyed this story very much. What a fun jaunt to the outback! I loved having two couples to cheer for! With Kim and Sam’s goals pitted against each other, I was on the edge of my seat wondering who would have to lose so the other could win. But the author found a perfect ending that left me with a happy sigh.