Outlander

Normally, when an adaptation of a book or series is made, I choose to read first, then watch. However, when you have COVID pretty much everything you usually do goes out the window. So in my 10 days of quarantine, I watched all of Outlander.

Now so you know, both versions have been on my radar for a while. I have the first two books as mass market editions and the first seven as e-books. So when I say I was planning on reading it, you can know it was true. I just hadn’t decided it was time. And you’d think after binging 5 seasons plus the current season’s available episodes, I’d be sick of it. Instead, I fell in love.

I fell in love with Jamie and Claire’s love for one another. I wanted to experience it again, so I started reading Outlander. It took me another two days to get through the 850 or so pages. Then I started the next (A Dragonfly in Amber) and even after that, the third (Voyager).

Only a book on hold becoming available at the library that I’ve been waiting 2 months for was able to loosen the grip this story had on me and even while reading that one, I keep thinking about Jamie and Claire. It keeps reminding me of my relationship with my spouse. It keeps grounding me in my own life and the love I have for those who are close.

I will definitely continue this series. At any point, I may decide that I’ve had enough and walk away, but at this point, I think I will run out of books and episodes before it lets go of me.

Book summary (per Goodreads):

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.