Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander #2)

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Dragonfly in Amber

by Diana Gabaldon

Pages: 752
Genre: Historical Romance
Published: 1992

Link to purchase: Amazon | Powell’s

“D’ye think I don’t know?” he asked softly. “It’s me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you–then I’m asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.”

Dragonfly in Amber is the second book in the Outlander series. When the first book ended, it wrapped up its story but gave enough of a hint that I wanted to continue reading to find out what happens next to Claire and Jamie. I thought the second book would start right where the first one left off. It did not. Instead it began in 1965 after Claire had been back in her correct time for twenty years and has a grown daughter that is obviously not from Frank Randall. While I found this somewhat interesting, I wanted to know what happened before Claire had reached this point of her life’s story. What happened to her when she was still in the 1740s? How did she finally make it back? How long was she with Jamie before she came back and why did she come back? So many questions!

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I eventually did get the answers to all of those questions so that was satisfying. It took me a bit to get into the book though because I did not want to read about 1965 first. Later on, when the book ended back in that time, I did want to know about it and I wished that all of it had been at the end of the book. I understood a bit why Gabaldon made 1965 time period be the bookends of the book, but it made me feel like I was trudging through stuff I did not want to read to get to the good stuff.

When the book finally switched back to 1740s with Jamie and Claire landing in France, I was pleased. I found it all quite exciting and interesting to read. I sympathized with Claire being bored and wanting to get a job or something to do rather than hang around her house all day or have pointless conversations with people. I was a bit sad to see them head back to Scotland, only because the day-to-day minutiae of war gets a bit boring. There were some fairly interesting parts, mostly when Claire managed to get herself caught up in some danger. I wish there had more excitement or maybe less detail about the non-exciting parts. Towards the end of the story, it was heartbreaking, since I did learn why Claire had to return to her correct time.

By then, I was ready to go back to 1965 and figure out what had happened to Claire since she had returned. I had to actually go back and reread a bit of what happened at the beginning of the book since I was not ready to read it at that point and had skimmed it in frustration. Then, Gabaldon had to go throw a doozy of a twist in there and make me want to start on the third book! I will wait until after I watch the second season of Outlander on Starz though, but it has been tempting to start on it immediately.

Grade: B-

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