Since I haven’t been living under a rock for the past several years, I was familiar with Diana Gabaldon and her hugely popular and much loved Outlander series, but for the longest time I turned my nose up at the books, insisting that I did not read romance novels, and certainly not one featuring such an outlandish premise as this one did. For years, despite countless recommendations from friend and stranger alike, I resisted Gabaldon’s siren call.

And then, on a whim, I gave in.

I recently celebrated my tenth wedding anniversary and my husband and I celebrated by taking an extended weekend trip to Charleston, a historic city on the coast of South Carolina that never of us had visited before. Since I am lucky enough to have a husband who likes to drive, and luckier still to be able to read in a moving vehicle without suffering motion sickness, I figured 5-hour stint uninterrupted by any major distractions was the perfect venue to succumb to Gabaldon’s charms, even though I still held onto a good chunk of skepticism that said I wouldn’t like it. (Hence my backseat backup of two or three other books I’d wanted to read.) I’d been warned by friends that the first 50 pages or so were a bit tough to get through, but worth sticking it out for, but they needn’t have worried. From the very first page of Outlander, I was enthralled with the story, and the five-hour drive passed in the blink of an eye.

The story, for those of you who may not know, begins when Claire, a young married woman, is visiting the Scotland with her husband, Frank, on a second honeymoon after being separated for most of their marriage by the events of World War II. One day, while wandering along a hillside, Claire comes across a circle of standing stones, and inadvertently steps through a portal in time, finding herself in 18th-century Scotland, surrounded by fighting tribes of Scottish Highlanders and British troops.  She meets Jamie, a gregarious and handsome Highlander, whom Claire, with her background as a wartime nurse, helps heal from battle wounds. Their story is one filled with action, adventure, romance, and plenty of in-more-ways-than-one thrilling moments.

Well, for obvious reasons, I didn’t get much reading time in during our weekend (although we did get to enjoy some of the sights of Charleston and the surrounding area, including our stay at a historic inn, splurging for a wonderful meal, visiting a local winery and distillery, seeing tea being processed at a Bigelow tea garden and spending some time wandering the grounds of an 18th-century plantation) and so it wasn’t until the drive back to Georgia that I got to immerse myself once again in Claire and Jamie’s world. And even then I wasn’t finished (the hardcover version weighs in at almost 700 pages and the subsequent books in the series are even longer) but I couldn’t bear to wait to find out Claire and Jamie’s fates, so it wasn’t until 3:30 in the morning that I finished it, bleary-eyed and elated. I promptly – and sleepily – went into work the next day and checked out the second book in the series, Dragonfly in Amber, which I’d heard from the aforementioned friends was even better than its predecessor. Unfortunately, the beginning is rather jarring, and while I pushed through, my reading momentum has been broken, other books have struck my fancy or needed to be read, and six weeks later, I’ve yet to break 100 pages. It’s still on my nightstand and I know once I allow myself to delve back properly into Claire and Jamie’s story, I’ll be captivated once again, but for now, the magic has loosened its grip.