Reviews with content warning for War - Cross Stitch

💬: “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

Content Warnings

efsimpkin's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I cannot in good faith recommend this book. While I really enjoyed the first half of the book and the love story unfolding, the rest of it bounced from one batshit insane plot point to the other. It was also about 500 pages too long. There were some highlights and lovely parts, sweet conversations etc, but also far too much torture porn and GRAPHIC medical content for me to in good faith say I enjoyed any of the second half of the book. I will not be continuing to read this series

Content Warnings