Outlander

I've put this off for days. Preparing myself for the wrath of Dana and Kristin. I know how I feel when a beloved book of mine isn't adored. Simpletons! Idiots! But I just can't sugar coat it...here goes.

This book has a lot going for it. It reminded me very much of one of my favorite movies of all time, Somewhere In Time. You know? The one with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour? So romantic. This book is romantic like that. A woman from the 1940s gets trapped in the 1700 Scotland and is forced to marry for her protection. This is when it started to remind me of the paperback novels with heaving bosoms and muscular chests. The protagonists, Jamie and Claire, are married for convenience (he must protect her from his arch nemesis Jonathan Randall who is brutishly evil and she must be married to be protected by Scottish law instead of the English crown) but really he wants her and she falls for him. Passion ensues but she keeps getting kidnapped which keeps him on the hunt and her constant hero. No amount of pain or torture can stop him from protecting the woman he hardly knows but just can't get enough of. It's just...unbelievable. Diana Gabaldon writes an engaging story but doesn't develop the characters enough for this to be great literature. No one is that tough, that bewitching, that heroic or evil or honest or brave. Except in romance novels.

But that's not why us girls read books like these. Simply, this is a fairly tale but instead of pretty gowns, there are kilts and clans and a lot of fight scenes. But the love story reigns supreme over the underlying story about life in 1700s Scotland. Honestly, this is the kind of book that made me fall in love with reading. This book is seven hundred pages and I read it in a day and a half because I really wanted to know how it ended. And, happily, it is a series! There is more to come. I am looking forward to reading more about Jamie and Claire.

Love you guys! Forgive me?