Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

*All reviews I write will be spoiler free*

I finally finished Outlander!

This book is huge. Over 800 pages. That combined with going back to college…well, it took a while to read this book. About 2 weeks I think?

But I’m so glad I read it!

I’d heard so many people talking about this, including one of my favourite Booktubers -Sasha Alsberg – so of course I was going to get round to it at some point.

And now that I have, here’s my review!

Let’s talk about Outlander!

Title: Outlander

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Publisher: Arrow Books (Part of Penguin Random House)

Series Status: The 1st book in the Outlander series

Number of Pages: 863

My Rating: 5/5 stars!

---

(Found on Goodreads)

What if your future was the past?

1946, and Claire Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank. It’s a second honeymoon, a chance to learn how war has changed them and to re-establish their loving marriage.
But one afternoon, Claire walks through a circle of standing stones and vanishes into 1743, where the first person she meets is a British army officer – her husband’s six-times great-grandfather.

Unfortunately, Black Jack Randall is not the man his descendant is, and while trying to escape him, Claire falls into the hands of a gang of Scottish outlaws, and finds herself a Sassenach – an outlander – in danger from both Jacobites and Redcoats.

Marooned amid danger, passion and violence, her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives.

(Previously published as Cross Stitch)

I was always intrigued about this book. I still didn’t know much about it when I started, apart from it’s set in Scotland and involves time travel. But now I see why that’s then only thing people seem to know going in…there’s so much that happens, it’d just take ages to try and add any more without spoiling it!

I’ll just say this right now: I ADORE THIS BOOK!

I mean, you can tell from my initial reaction when I finished it last night…

But as I said in that update in Goodreads, I’m now writing a proper review – you know, that might actually make sense to most people rather than just a screaming mess.

Right, first off I’ll mention the setting. I do think this is a huge reason in why I loved the story so much. I love Scotland! I visited last year as a holiday and reading this book made me want to go back so SO much. The descriptions were vivid and I had no issues in imagining the scenes.

I do admit to feeling a bit intimidated by the size of the book. I don’t really like it when one book takes me a lot longer to read than usual. But…I got about 100 pages in and remember thinking “Oh my god I’m so happy it’s so long I love it I need as much as I can get!!!” And then when I hit the 200 page mark, I knew for definite I’ll be continuing this series, even if it takes me years to finish them all.

I didn’t expect myself to smile so much when reading this book. Claire was a great perspective to read from, all the smallest details were left in and her sense of humour was apparently the same as mine. I don’t mean the book is funny – oh no no. There’s just those small snippets in the story where you can’t help but laugh at the sass involved.

I loved both Claire and Jamie. The relationship development between these two was just insane. And with the other characters actually. If you compare everyone at the start of the book, to how they are at the end, you view everyone in a completely different light. It’s incredible.

This book is so cleverly thought through and put together! So much happens, you can turn just one page and be in a completely different situation all together. There’s a slight fantasy element to the story too – but just a hint of it. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that there’s things like time travel and witchcraft involved. But the theme is definitely more historical than anything, which I loved.

One thing I will say to anyone considering reading this book is that events don’t tend to be sugar coated. I found that near the end of the book, there was a scene I found really hard to read, purely because I knew exactly what was going on, and the effects of it. It wasn’t nice to read at all…but it was important in the story so I see why it was included. So this is just a small warning to people who are effected by hard-hitting stories. At times, this book can be one.

Well, this review is long enough by now. As you can probably tell, I really loved this story. It’s a new favourite of mine ❤ I can’t wait to get the next book!

Rated 5/5 stars!

Order from Amazon!

Have you read this book? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Or is it on your TBR?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Come and visit me!

My Twitter

My Instagram (Bookstagram)

My Goodreads

My Bloglovin’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~