Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

47 reviews

shanmul44's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0


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irenevh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

After starting on the outlander TV show, which I quite enjoyed, I decided to also give the original book a go. The problem in this is that the shows is a very straight adaptation so most of the book was near exactly the same as the TV show I watched. But I guess that is my own fault. 

The main difference is that with the book I actually felt how dense this story is. Over 700 pages long this book has so many events propped in there I think it could easily have been split into two books. Add to that the fact that often times after reading for about half an hour I was left disappointed by how few pages I had read, and I was left somewhat demotivated by the book and how slow my progress was. This doesn't immediately impact the story, but definitely did impact my reading experience. 

The story overall I do like. And I think Outlander does a better job than most time travel stories like these, to explore how weird it is to be in a different time period. How many things we say and know would be unknown or strange to the past. And of course as a woman also the role people expect you to take and the rights you have on any given day. 

While reading I also couldn't help but wonder how much shorter this book would be if the author would spend less time focusing on what Claire and Jamie get up to in their bedroom (and so many other places as well), as at some point those scenes just get very repetitive and add very little to the plot. 

Despite my liking the premise and the overall story, the amount of pages and the denseness of the book does provide somewhat of a hurdle. So although I am curious to see what happens next, there's a good chance I'll rather watch the TV show than to continue reading these lengthy books. 

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mykingdomforabookworthreading's review against another edition

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1.0


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lou_loo's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This is wonderful.
Everything about this is extraordinary: the characters, the plot, the writing, the pacing, the atmosphere and ambiance...
Diana Gabaldon wrote a masrerpiece and I adore her for it.
(However, having watched the Starz series and now read the 1st book, I will not recommend it to anyone because I know it is not a book and a story for everyone)
I am very excited to read the rest of the series and dive even deeper in the Outlander Universe !

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callie_pearce's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5


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kengore's review against another edition

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He is too abusive and she is too annoying.

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katmystery's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This book barely passes the Bechdel test. For something literally narrated by a woman, that is pretty bad.

For the first 40%, this was an engaging historical fic, albeit a bit slow, about a witty former WWII army nurse who finds herself brought back in time to 1740s Scotland. Then, when the romance plot started, suddenly it was all about her 18th century love interest, a character who Gabaldon endlessly romanticized despite his highly abusive and controlling behavior. When I wasn’t horrified by Jamie, I was bored by hundreds upon hundreds of pages of conversations and events that added nothing to the plot or character development, and I quickly grew to be so irritated by the narrator that I just wanted it to end. In addition to all of this, all the women who are sexually assaulted in this book (and there are a lot) are blamed for the assault, and the so-called “feminist” narrator does this, too. She’s barely more progressive than people from the 1700s; for half the book, she doesn’t care about anything but the abusive love interest.

I only finished this because of the sunk cost fallacy. 2 stars for the historical aspects, which were well done.

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au_conn1's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25


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sonygaystation's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5


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sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

💬: “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered into my hair. “There’s the two of us now.” I felt warm, soothed, and safe for the first time in many days."

Gabaldon, Diana. Outlander: A Novel (Outlander, Book 1) (p. 212). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

📖Genres: romance, romantasy, adult, adventure, historical romance, historical, fantasy

📚Page Count: 850

🎧Audiobook Length: 32h 38min

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️ - 2/5
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TW -
ableism, animal death, blood, body horror, cursing, death, death of parent, emotional abuse, gore, grief, injury/injury detail, misogyny, murder, physical abuse, pregnancy, rape, sexism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual content, sexual violence, torture, violence, vomit, war


Outlander by Diana Gabaldon is an 800+ page historical romance that has action, spice, time travel, and adventure. Claire is a nurse from 1945 and she's thrusted back in time a few hundred years, where she has to survive until she figures out how to get home. It's here that she meets Jamie, a Scott who wants to show her a love so true. At least she won't have to try and survive alone, with him by her side. I didn't love this story, I barely liked it. Between the weird and slow pacing and the threat of rape being constantly thrown around, by the time the book was over I was exhausted and annoyed from the read.

I didn't like the book's pacing. The book started off really slow, I'd say it took about 2 to 3 hours of listening to the audiobook for the story to actually start moving forward. Once the story started to move, things got interesting and I became invested. Then, I'd say 200 pages into the action, things slowed down to a crawl and I stopped caring about the story. After about 150 pages of the slow crawl, things picked up again. Do you see where I'm going with this? This strange pacing continued throughout the entire novel.

(Trigger Warning  - rape, sexual assault)
The threat of rape was constant from the moment the main character went back in time. I understand that your female main character went back in time, that doesn't mean you have to have every other man she encounters try to physically & sexually attack her. I honestly should have counted the amount of times Claire was threated with physical or sexual harm by a man, there are a few times where she actually IS attacked. Claire apparently isn't the only one who's in danger of being sexually assaulted.
At the tail end of the book Jamie gets arrested and he incidentally ran into Randall, well Randall is an evil man so he wanted to take revenge on Jamie and he does that by mutilating, torturing, and raping Jamie for an uncertain amount of days.


(Trigger Warning  - rape, sexual assault, drugging)
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Now,
by the time Jamie is rescued from Randall at the end of the book, he has PTSD, he's so sick that he might die, and he doesn't want to look at his wife because he feels ashamed and disgusted with himself because of the sexual assault. How do I know this? Because he tells Claire and there's a dialogue about the assault and Jamie tells Claire exactly what was said and done to him. For some odd reason the author decided to make Claire drug Jamie with opium, so he hallucinates, and then she pretends to be his assaulter (Randall) and she says the things he said and then she does the things he physically did to elicit a response out of Jamie. Well, it does get a reaction, Jamie attacks Claire and they go tumbling to the ground (while Claire is getting beat on by Jamie). Somehow, while they're tumbling on the group Claire is able to insert Jamie into her, and now they're having intercourse. Claire "cured him" and helped him claim his "manhood".
OMG. How ridiculous, gross, and unnecessary.

(Trigger Warning - physical abuse, domestic abuse)
The spice fluctuated. At first I was into it but then there was this strange scene where
Jamie physically held down and beat Claire because he wanted to prove to his band of merry men that he was punishing her for her actions. I just didn't understand this scene, it made me sick to my stomach and it made me like Jamie a lot less than I previously did. After that, I wasn't interested in any spice between Jamie and Claire.
I'm giving it one and a half chilies 🌶️.5 out of five chilies

This book also ends in the
pregnancy trope
, and if you know me then you know I hate that trope very much. So, the ending was just disappointing for many reason. I really tried to trust recommendations and then trust the process with this one and that failed me. There were only a few times during the 32 hour audiobook that I enjoyed the reading experience. I just didn't like this book and I won't be continuing with the series.
⭐️⭐️ - 2/5

I listened to this for free on the library app, hoopladigital.com

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