Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

This book kept popping up everywhere in December. Whether I was browsing a bookstore, or watching booktube, I always seemed to stumble across it. I don't read very many romances--at least not since high school. Yes, there was a time when I used to knock off a couple 1960s Harlequins a week, but those days are long over. I wasn't sure if I would like Outlander for the simple fact that it's a romance. I didn't want to purchase something I might put down after the first chapter. So, I put a hold on it at my library and waited.

I waited for more than a month. When It finally arrived, I read it in two days. Not because I couldn't put it down--although it was very good--but because the writing is simple. Not simple in bad way, simple in a popular fiction sense. A book like this is just what I need when everything else that I'm reading is academic.

For any readers who haven't heard of Outlander yet, it's the first book in a series and it was first published in 1991. Currently, there is a TV show, but I've never watched it and have no interest in it.

Outlander begins in 1945, just after the end of the Second World War. Protagonist Claire Randall, while vacationing with her husband in Scotland, finds herself taken back in time into the 1700s. Although I found Claire's behaviour a little wishy-washy at times (she can't seem to decide whether she loves her 1940s husband Frank or not), I did enjoy the book and I plan to read the second novel in the series, Dragonfly in Amber. I'm curious about this second book  because a synopsis I've read says it's set in 1968 and 1774-6.