Outlander Review

Outlander (Outlander #1) by Diana Gabaldon

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon--when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach--an "outlander"--in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life...and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

(source: Goodreads)

4.14/5

My review 

Wow. Wow. Wow. It's been a while since a good book did such an impression on me, ye ken ;) If I'm completely honest, I started reading Outlander because the long hours I had to wait for a new episode each week were killing me. I loved the series, the minute I started watching it. I love it that they show us the scenery of the beautiful Scotland, it makes you want to teleport there and discover all it has to offer you. 

(It's so hard writing right now because all the time I want to write ye instead of you and ye ken after every sentence.)

I love books. I especially love books that drain you of all emotion and make you physically ill after you're finished with it. I love it when my mind keeps wondering about little scenes that happen in the book long hours after I read it. Outlander is one of these books.

I can praise the book all I want, but there are still some things I didn't really like. Let's take the violence on women and children. I know, I know, it's a book about Highlands in the 18th century, it was common to bend a child over the knee and beat him if he was disobedient, or beat your wife if she was disobedient also. I know things like that were common in the past, but that still doesn't mean it was right. And this is why I love Claire and her stubborn mind. She taught Jamie about love between a man and a woman as something sacred and beautiful. She taught him that marriage is not just about making love and the man working outside all day and women cooking, and beating the wife if she was disobedient. It's so nice to see a character who was so strong, not just for Jamie, but for herself. It was beautiful to read that she was sacrificing everything, even her life, for the man that makes her feel so alive and loved.

Their love is that kind of love you don't come across often. How much must you love another person that you sacrifice yourself, even your soul and mind, to save them? Well, a lot.

Outlander is not just about Jamie and Claire, I love it when he called her Sassenach so adoringly by the way, it's also about pride and friendship and family. It's about how low can a human being go to make someone so miserable, and how that someone can lift himself up, by the help of others and himself, and face the future with all the scars that show and those who are hidden inside. 

I'll read the following books for sure, but I need a wee bit time to pull myself together and prepare myself for greater joy and heartbreak, ye ken? It is a book worth reading, especially if you like reading historical fiction.