I’d been wanting to read this book for ages and I’ve had it on my shelves for more than a year. I finally decided to read this monster and it took me an entire month to do it. It was really a great and interesting read nonetheless.

I loved the historical references in this book and the differences between how Claire and Jamie see the world; they come from completely different times. It was interesting to see Jamie changing his opinions about things thanks to Claire, but also the other way around. We often think we have evolved from our ancestors but we have many things to learn from them still. I’m not particularly fond of time travel but it was not that important in the book (weel, it’s the main theme of the book but it is not too dominating) (And I just noticed I wrote weel instead of well, which is my next topic about the book).

I took me ages to read it because it’s huge, but also because I was not used to Scottish language. I’m not a native English speaker, my first language being French, so I really had some difficulty understanding the dialogues at first. But then I got used to it and I was so invested in the book that I started to write words the way they are written in Outlander (I mainly use English at work). It was a really fun experience!

I did not particularly like the romance between Claire and Jamie at first; I thought it was going way too fast. But then I found that their relationship (and not only the sexy times) was really developing into something strong and it was interesting to read about it (the sexy times were interesting as well).

I’m not going to develop too much because this book is way too long and too full of interesting developments and I don’t have a lot of time (I really want to post this before the New Year). In brief, I enjoyed how realistic this book was, with a lot of humor and also a lot of not so funny events. I definitely recommend it.

Synopsis

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just 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 circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

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

Review