Outlander

On my second attempt, I found myself loving this book.

Yes, there are hard scenes of sexual degradation but it was commonplace in the eighteenth century for such things to occur to enforce position and dominance..

But.

The vast majority of this book is filled with beautifully written scenes of a Scotland that was (as it is now) searching for the freedom from Britain it so desires... My advice, is to stick to your guns and push forward through the post WW2 chapters till you are taken to Highland Scotland in all it's glory and despair...

Basic fun with some interesting historical details included.

I did go and listen to the Outlander musical on Spotify - that sounded very sweet. I'm glad I got to read the book and create my own interpretation.

3 stars out of 5, bordering on 3.5. I know a lot of folks who love this book, and it was well-written for sure. Unfortunately, it's just not the right genre for me, and I feel uncompelled to read the next volume anytime soon. The only thing I knew about this book when I started reading was that it involved time traveling which I thought sounded exciting! It wasn't really, though. In fact, I don't fully understand why the story is wrapped around the time travelling, and why we got a lot of exposure to Claire in 1945. I never felt any dramatic conflict of having Claire choose between her husband Frank and Jamie Fraser, because I hardly had the time to know Frank.

In any case, Claire gets sucked through a ring of stones, from the year 1945 to 200 years earlier, just before the Jacobite rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Instead of being totally boggled by it and confused and helpless and eager to get back home, Claire seems content with being tossed into the role of castle physician for the clan that captures her. When she is questioned by the English and has the risk of being turned over to the brutal ancestor of her husband Frank, Jonathan Randall, she marries hunky Jamie Fraser instead, and then has lots of sex with him. There's other stuff that happens, some of it quite gory, but that's pretty much the gist of it.

I enjoyed the writing and was fairly entertained, but I wasn't swept off my feet with the glorious 'romance' of it all. I might be too lesbian to fully enjoy the love story here. I actually didn't really care for Jamie of the Scots accent, some aspects of his personality I found grating.

My biggest gripe is probably the irritatingly stupid part of the book in which Jamie punishes Claire by spanking her ass raw in a very non-consensual scene. Yeah yeah, men did that at the time, and Jamie is all about suffering through physical punishments but seriously, really? I wanted to delete the book from my Kindle in disgust. So many pages wasted on that stuff. I also really didn't get the last part of Claire trying to 'cure' Jamie from his rape experience by re-enacting it in parts. What the bloody hell.

Romance lovers, rejoice, it's probably your kind of book, but if you like historical fiction more than romance, it's probably going to be a disappointment.

A nurse from 20th century drops through time into 18th century Scottish Highlands. She gets in troubles, gets rescued, falls in love, makes love, heals people and is healed. It's utterly unbelievable, but cute story. The villain, however, is always the same, and no matter how much she moves around, he is always present without actually following her. I swallowed time-travel, but can't digest the lousy villain.