Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I do not read romance novels for precisely the reasons I ended up hating this book. This summer I was determined to find a good, romantic book that's not YA and not trashy. Unfortunately those books don't exist anymore and I was forced into the romance novel genre. I tried Outlander because of all the wonderful reviews it had but honestly, in the end it's just your typical overhyped relationship that is suppose to be 'romantic' but to me seems abusive and sexist. Some Spoilers: Let me start with the rapes. Good god, I know it's historical fiction and women got raped a lot back then, but this protagonist almost gets raped one million times (an exaggeration, of course). And nearly every time she's saved by some big strong Scottish man, usually Jamie. Taking out the rape saves, she's still saved another hundred times for being stupid (another exaggeration), or getting in one terrible situation or another. Claire is constantly getting herself and everyone around her in trouble and all the hot sexy Scottish men have to constantly bail her out. What a strong heroine. Then there's the sex scenes. Don't even get me started. You ARE talking historical fiction here right? And somehow I'm suppose to believe that Jamie is a virgin when they get married?? With all the rape flying around and women as property talk, do you honestly think a man whose as good looking as Jamie, at his age in the Highlands is going to be a virgin? And naturally Claire just organisms on the third round, without Jamie knowing anything about the female body...or even doing anything with it really. And why didn't Claire teach him where to touch and what to do again? Btw ladies, I don't know if you know this or not, but according to Claire a women doesn't orgasm every time. It takes a VERY good lover to take a women to such a place. But lucky for Claire it only took Jamie three times to perfect it. And last but not least, there's the part where Jamie beats her. Wonderful. If you're going to justify this with the 'it's historical!' statement, can we please go back to the fact that we're suppose to believe Jamie is a virgin? This book wants so badly to have a strong feminist female lead in order to fit in with the modern times, but then reverts back to a very anti-feminist place with very disrespectful men...and the strong female lead is powerless and pointless. All in all, it's a romance novel. Most of them are pretty sexist and sexually unrealistic, so if you're already reading them and like them, then I'm sure you'll like this one. If you're like me and think, wow romance novels are ridiculous and have horrible messages in them for women everywhere. You will hate this, as I did.