Ahhhhhhh Outlander. Even though these books are not my usual genre (historical fiction), I am finding such joy in them. 

After the cliffhanger at the end of the last book, there will definitely be spoilers here so stop reading if you don’t want to risk it! 

At the end of the last book, we see Claire go back through the stones to modern times - she’s pregnant with Jamie’s baby and it looks like the only way to keep her and the baby safe from the battle raging at Culloden. 

This book starts a couple of decades later. Brianna is an adult now and Claire and Brianna are back in Scotland. Claire assumed that Jamie had died at Culloden, but following some extensive research it becomes clear that he survived. 

All of a sudden, Claire’s life is flipped upside down. It’s obvious that she’s never been fully happy since she left Jamie and now that Brianna is grown, it seems like maybe she could go back. Could she leave her only daughter to return to the man she loved so deeply? 

Well, spoiler alert, she does. And it’s not entirely smooth sailing on her return. Jamie might be glad to have her back, but the welcome isn’t quite as friendly from some of Jamie’s family. And while Claire has been bringing up her daughter in the modern day, Jamie has been living too. He’s not the same as he was when Claire left. 

The book takes us on a grand adventure to foreign soil that made me quite jealous (apart from the deadly danger of course). Jamie and Claire are reunited and we see their relationship grow and change, but it still has elements of the same fire as it did before. 

The book is such an unusual blend of romance and history combined with action and suspense. There’s drama and there’s adventure, but with the romance that brings it all together and makes the book feel like a warm cosy hug, even when things are going all sorts of wrong. 

My only negative about this book was the derogatory references to small Chinese man that Jamie has somehow brought into his little gang. I don’t know if it was trying to reproduce the way they’d have talked about him in the historical context, or if it’s just because the book was written in the 90s before we were more aware of how we talked, but it made me feel quite uncomfortable to be honest. But that was my only real criticism. 

Of course, as would be expected for a series, we end the book on another cliffhanger which has made me so desperate to pick up book 4 (and I’ve already gone out and bought 5 and 6 ready). They’re hefty books at over a thousand pages each, but they don’t feel like heavy reading while you’re transported back in time and thousands of miles away. I can’t wait to see what happens next for Jamie and Claire.