kc dyerRezensionen

finder fraser was a lot of entertaining Scottish fun, even with predictable Rebecca weirdness!

Dropping the Venal turnaround for a Teresa outright purchase
and a lot of predictable scenarios,
Eighty Days delivered a fun new premise to Jules Verne re-creations.

Rescue of brave force Sumaya was a highlight...not sure why Dominic is not waiting for someone so "fantastic."

Fun to see Dominic and Romy grow along with their adventures!

Inspired purchase of Thomas King's INCONVENIENT INDIAN.

This book was so much fun to read! A bit predictable, but perfect for a summer beach read. The main character is adorable, and all Outlander fans who have fallen in love with Jamie Fraser will lover her, too.

*I was provided a copy of the book by the publisher and NetGalley for review; all opinions are my own*

Eighty Days to Elsewhere is the ultimate road trip book and a fun, fast read that combines two of my favorite things – books and travel.

The comps for this novel were Around the World in Eighty Days meets “Amazing Race”. If you’re familiar with this reality show, you know the pace the travelers are on, and how little time is spent in each location, so that should set expectations about her travel experience. This is no slow stroll through Paris! (Her Paris adventure was anything but what she had planned…) I love the idea, too, of a literary trip that follows the path of Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and to attempt it in a short amount of time is the perfect setup for chaos.

Add the fast pace to Romy’s complete lack of travel experience and the sheltered life she’s led, and you’ve got the perfect set-up for some hilarious and/or unfortunate disasters. She’s awkward, she’s definitely not very worldly, and she undergoes a lot of personal growth in the book. There are a few details that come out late in the book which might have actually explained a lot about both Romy and Dominic (no spoilers).

I think Eighty Days to Elsewhere is perfect for literary lovers who are currently experiencing wanderlust.

Excellent rom-com fluff, especially for Outlander fans. It’s just the right blend of serious and silly and “Oh, Emma, no….” It’s one of the few books I’ve seen that doesn’t make fun of fans, and manages to be a love letter to the Outlander novels and to Scotland while not being heavy-handed about it or overshadowing Emma’s journey. I did find her a bit overly shallow at the start (like her Jamie must have red hair), and perhaps a bit naive as well, but hey, I’ve run into those tropes in romance and travel novels, respectively, before. Whatever. Dyer set out to entertain and she certainly succeeded. I was rooting for Emma almost before I knew it.

7/10

I have some mixed feelings about this book. I kind of liked it but I also kind of didn't like it. There were times that I liked Emma and times that I didn't. I never once like Sophia and I really don't like that there was never a true confrontation between the sisters nor was there a resolution. I found it odd that Emma was so leary of so many people but yet was completely accepting of this a very obvious scam artist. It just didn't add up well for me. I enjoyed reading about her journey though and the connection with Outlander. I also really loved her time in Nairn Scotland. Jack and Geordie were also very likable secondary characters and made for great relationships with Emma. Overall I feel if you are a fan of Outlander than this is a fun read that I recommend.

I really enjoyed this. I identified with Emma so many times - she made tons of mistakes, but she kept trying to find her Fraser. It was a sweet, fun novel which was very amusing for an Outlander fan. Good read!

Readable½

For some reason I can't articulate very clearly, this book is giving me some serious anxiety. I've made it thru 143 pages, so I feel like I've given it a fair chance to impress me. Can't.

Emma Sheridan is twenty-five, divorced, and survivor of an overall badly failed love life. She's also just been fired from her job as a barista at a Chicago Starbucks. She also has a sister is more than prepared to tell Emma exactly what's wrong with every decision and choice she's ever made in her life.

But Emma has a plan. She's sold all her possessions, cashed in all her savings, and is going to Scotland to look for her very own Jamie Fraser. For the one or two people out there who may not know, Jamie Fraser is the male romantic lead in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander time travel romance series. And she's going to blog about her adventures.

Emma is a smart, capable young woman who is willing to work hard, and she makes some incredibly dumb decisions. I don't mean just romantic decisions, although some of her decisions she makes after meeting Hamish make me want to shake some self-respect into her.

She makes an utter fool of herself when she has a chance to meet Diana Gabaldon in Philadelphia on her way to NYC to catch her plane to Scotland. Something else happens in Philly that, if I said what I want to say, it would be a spoiler. She gets taken by a transparently obvious con artist.

And there is the awkward issue of how much she is willing to compromise and wear blinders to let herself go on believing that Hamish is her personal Scottish warrior.

And yet she's friendly, likable, no shrinking violet, and willing to work hard to keep her adventure alive after events that should have brought it to an abrupt and ignominious end. She also does not let her superior, condescending pill of a sister undermine her confidence and determination.

Despite all my complaints about this book, Emma is hard not to like, and hard not to cheer for. A good light read.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This book was pretty up and down for me. There were times I liked it and there were times I didn't. Overall it held my interest enough to keep reading and I'm glad I finished it. I really felt like Emma was overly naive in this book. So many things were obvious but she continued to be oblivious. I really liked Jack's character and wish he had been more present in the story.

Meh, it was okay. Fast read, not very deep, but a little entertaining. Added places to see in Scotland.

Emma is a bit of at ends. She just turned 29 and her life is pretty much falling apart. Since she loves the Outlander book series, and is in love with the fictional character of Jamie (and which of us hasn't been in her shoes with some book or another?), she decides to sell all of her things and go to Scotland to find him, writing a blog along the way.

I just finished this one and couldn't put it down, really and truly! I love happy endings, and I love twists and turns and kind of thinking something was going to happen, but not being sure about it. It's nice and comfy without being boring or entirely predictable. If you've read Outlander, you won't be disappointed with this one. I'm not sure what else to say. It's like chick lit, but with a bit more meat on it - but not heavy or tiring at all; I raced through it! There was humor and the characters were very real (the villain Sunshine aside). And look, it's so good, it got its own exclamation marks! Super cute!½

You may be surprised that I think a 3 star book is "worthy of my shelves." The thing about my shelves is that I like to save space for books that I could see myself recommending and lending to others. This is one of those books. Finding Fraser is about a woman, whose life is on the fast track to nowhere, going on a journey to find her own Jamie Fraser. She's a bit naive and a little out there, but I loved the premise of the book and enjoyed the journey. My one issue would have to be her little blog. Maybe posts like that worked in 2008, but not-so-much these days, especially for the amount of interaction she had.
This book is perfect for: Anyone who has read or watched Outlander.

This book has been out for a while now, but I just refused to buy it because, how good can it be?! I mean, I am one of millions of OUTLANDER fans out there that thinks no one can come close to writing as good as Herself, right?!

Imagine my surprise when I opened my Christmas gift from my husband. My first thought was, as I looked at it and then my hubby, OMG! He’s paying attention when I ramble on and on about OUTLANDER! My second was, SHIT! Now I have to read it, or I’ll hurt his feelings.

Well, I read it and WTH! I just loved it. It was interesting, engaging, funny, sweet and surprisingly very well written.

I enjoyed the heroine’s POV and loved the way author took me on a journey which I’ll never undergo. She made me feel like I was there!

If you’re like me and are having doubts about this book, please succumb and buy it. You’ll be so glad you did.

Melanie for b2b

The story is about Emma Sheridan, who, at 29, having been fired from her job and with no romantic prospects, drops everything to leave Chicago, travel to Scotland, and maybe find her own Jamie Fraser as in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. She also starts a blog to document her progress.

This book has a cute premise, and I liked the way narrative chapters were interwoven with blog posts. The fact that the blog posts had comments also added to the fun. But I thought the quality of the book was very uneven. The parts about Scotland were sketchy - there she is crying over Culloden, for example, but if you weren’t already familiar with what happened there, you wouldn’t get much information here beyond the fact that many Scots died there for some reason or other. And after a very short time in the country, she starts referring to “my beloved Highlands.” Really?

Moreover, early on in the story, she is robbed in Scotland. You would think she would have then taken steps to protect her credit, for example, or to file an insurance claim, particularly since she was in constant contact with her sister, the Chief Financial Officer of a big Chicago firm. But inexplicably, she never takes any of the necessary steps.

Also, since the outcome was obvious, it would have been nice to find out more about her eventual romantic interest, who, it might be noted, only had about twenty minutes of contact with Emma before he became smitten. Instead, a yahoo that Emma thinks looks like Jamie occupies most of the story and most of Emma’s (and our) time. She is so clearly trying to fit this totally inappropriate guy (jerky to the point of caricature) into an Outlander-shaped procrustean mold that it’s hard to fathom why she doesn’t see this herself.

Finally, there wasn’t very much about the Outlander series in this book at all, aside from the Scotland setting and the jokes about kilts. Oh, and Emma’s tendency, whenever anything went wrong, to turn to the Outlander books and chase fantasies from them for solace. Her coping skills leave a lot to be desired.

Still, I think the author shows promise and creativity. Some of the characters, like Morag McGuinty, and Ashwin Patel, are very entertaining. Too bad Emma herself was so lacking.

If you have enjoyed the Outlander series, then this is a fun book you should read. Emma really wants a Jamie of her own, and she sets out to find him. I laughed out loud a few times, and I truly enjoyed the descriptions of Scotland. This is a romance and a journey that are both enjoyable.

I have loved the Outlander series since it was first released and when I came across the romance book, Finding Fraser where the heroine runs to Scotland to "Find her Jamie", how could I not read it?!

This book is sweet, funny with some seriousness here and there. Mix in romance and self discovery for the heroine and it comes out to be a really great story well worth the reading. Definitely one I recommend adding to your Beach Reads this summer!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and Netgalley for the gift of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I adore the Outlander series. So I was looking forward to this one based on the idea alone. In the end, I was not as deeply invested in the main character and thought some of the friction points were forced. In the end, the denouement was pleasant and meant the book wasn't a total bust. But I had to gut through some parts.

SPOILER ALERT!

Finding Fraser by kc dyer was a recommended read for fans of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Being a HUGE Outlander fan myself—and devotee of Jamie Fraser—I naturally checked it out. All in all, I really enjoyed the story. It’s witty, inspiring, entertaining, relatable. Anyone who has read Outlander has dreamed about finding their ‘Jamie Fraser’. As a reader, I was transported to Scotland tagging along on Emma’s journey.

With that said, I have a few complaints. First, the plot was entirely too predictable. I knew Emma was going to end up with Jack after their very first meeting. It was also clear to me that Rebecca, who she thought was his girlfriend, was actually his agent. The see-through plot made the book drag on a little because I kept waiting for the inevitable to happen. Second complaint, when the inevitable did happen, the book was over! It was a bit anti-climactic. There was no build-up, no pining. And actually, with the exception of a few chance meetings and an email here and there, Jack was barely in the book at all until the end. I wish the book spent more time on Emma’s and Jack’s relationship. The ending does leave the door wide open to a sequel though—fingers crossed! And third complaint—where was the romance? I was expecting love scenes like those between Claire and Jamie in Outlander. At the end when Emma and Jack finally did hook up at the stones, the book gave no details.

Despite its flaws, I enjoyed the book and would recommend Finding Fraser to anyone who can’t get enough Outlander! You’ll find yourself adding ‘Outlander tour of Scotland’ to your bucket list.

Finding Fraser is a charming, well-written story about an obsessed Outlander fan trying to find her very own Jamie Fraser. It's actually not so much a romance as a story of self-discovery with elements of a romantic comedy. The heroine is a 29-year-old American who leaves her sorry life in Chicago behind and sets off for an extended trip round Scotland in search of a real-life Jamie Fraser. During her stay in various places (Edinburgh, Stirling, Nairn in the Highlands etc.) she has some funny adventures, meets some interesting characters and gets herself into some trouble.
If you've read at least the first book in the Outlander series (or maybe watched the TV program) (I listened to it on audio and really liked it), you might be more likely to enjoy this, as there are obviously quite a few references to the book. It's a lighthearted, sometimes comical story featuring an almost annoyingly naive woman. I couldn't believe she was meant to be 29. She really wasn't the brightest cookie in the jar.
I would recommend this for fans of Outlander, fans of Scotland, or anybody looking for an entertaining, quirky Rom-Com.

There is an audio version available. However, I would recommend reading this in print and imagining the various accents in your head. It's very difficult to pull off English, Scottish and Irish accents with authenticity and not every narrator is successful (yup, that's me attempting to be tactful). I can usually identify accents but I'm hopeless at trying to imitate them. Anyway, I appreciate that the narrator here had a difficult task. She was pretty good at portraying the protagonist's personality, though.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The audio version was purchased by myself.

This was a very delightful book to read. As a avid reader of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, my expectations were high for another author to do the series justice even as a reference. I found the main character easy to relate to and the content quirky but fun to read.

Great story.. almost forgot it WAS a story.. and not a real life happening.. particularly the way she wrote the blog along the way :) Even had a good ending.. sort of half expected.. and she did sort of take the coincidence thing to a new level - even competing with DG (Herself) on that score. Laughed and cried all the way through.. was going to tell you K.C. Dyer to write a sequel but I guess we don't really need that do we :) *winks*

One of the liabilities of our having made a quick jaunt to Toronto recently is that, while Pam was off businessing for the day, I was within easy walking distance of, er, three -- countem, THREE -- good bookshops. My rucksack was interestingly . . . heavy on the way home: a good thing we did the journey by train rather than 'plane. But the good thing about the bookshops was that they offered a distinctively different selection of books than I'm accustomed to seeing here in NJ, and so I was able to pick up this Canadian YA time-travel novel. And jolly good it is too.

13-year-old gloomyguts brat Darby is sent to spend a few weeks with her grandparents in "one-lobster town" Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and immediately assumes she's going to have a ghastly time of it. But then she runs into the mysterious boy Gabe, who lives in the big blue house on the corner even though everyone assumes that house is derelict. Still whingeing in her customary way, Darby allows Gabe to lead her to the ruined chapel in the blue house's big garden; on stepping with him through the gaping window she is transported back through time, to a prehistoric era where the ancestors of the Inuit survive as best they can in a glaciated Canada. Gabe is a member of the little clan among which Darby finds herself, and apparently always has been; she herself has a different status in that she has a sort of weak interaction with the physical world, whereby she can't influence it (humans aside from Gabe are unaware of her presence and animals have just a vague inkling that she's there) but it can influence her -- if she falls over she hurts herself. During one of her later trips she realizes the nub of it: "She was a ghost from another time" (p127).

She spends a couple of days with the proto-Inuit, then is directed toward a means of getting home to her own time. In each of her two subsequent trips -- one to a coffin ship come to Canada bearing immigrants from Ireland and plagued witrh smallpox and typhus, the other aboard a much more civilized immigrant vessel, carrying one of her ancestors -- the pattern continues of Gabe, her guide, being already present in, and playing an active role in, the world while Darby herself has just a ghostly presence and, at visit's end, must find a portal to be able to escape homeward. Meanwhile, between trips, Darby is learning about her own and Charlottetown's history, learning to relate to her idiosyncratic Nan and, as he descends into Alzheimers, Gramps, and (no prizes for guessing this bit) generally growing up to a much nicer child than when she came to Prince Edward Island just a few short weeks ago. The events of her real life, and the lives of those around her, are not trivial; but what she has witnessed during her cross-temporal journeys helps her cope with them, if for no other reason than that, however grim things might get for her in the 21st century, she's come face-to-face with worse elsewhen.

The book has it moments of humour, as when the still rather prissy, self-absorbed Darby at one point goes through the reasons why her latest temporal sojourn isn't a dream:

"Two: Shoes do not get soaked in dreams." Well, unless you counted that unfortunate time when she was four and mistook her mother's closet for the bathroom in the middle of the night. But hey, she was a little kid. (p117)

We never do discover who Gabe really is, which is just fine: that's what you'd expect of an elemental, after all. Less satisfyingly, there's another kid whom Darby encounters a couple of times in modern Charlottetown: he serves no plot purpose and seems just to get forgotten about. And I did get rattled when what's been established archaeological knowledge for decades was described half-dismissively as "some professor who had a theory that the way the first native people came to North America was over a land bridge on the Bering Strait" (p84). Otherwise I enjoyed this adventure just fine . . . although I did wonder if its intended YA readership would like it as much as I did, if they might find it a bit -- gasp! -- educational in feel. Well, if so, that's their tough luck: the book worked just fine for moi.

Kind of shameful GoodReads doesn't have a cover pic for this one, isn't it? Or maybe the shame is that no publisher has picked up the US or UK rights. Who knows? I'm just damn' glad my visit to Toronto enabled me to find a copy.

Reviewed by Carrie Spellman for TeensReadToo.com

Winter term at Eagle Glen is about to start. Darrell just turned fourteen. She's home for the Christmas holidays. All of these things should give Darrell some amount of happiness, but she just can't seem to get there.

For starters, her mom has a new boyfriend that she brought over for Darrell's birthday dinner. This is supposed to be a dinner for Darrell, not that she necessarily wants the attention right now, but it's definitely not supposed to be about her mom and her new boyfriend. And thinking about Eagle Glen just brings back the horribly tragic mistake in time that happened at the end of last term. Darrell isn't sure she ever wants to play with time again. But, when a passageway appears in Eagle Glen's library, it seems like time has a different idea.

This time Darrell, Kate, Brodie, and (accidentally) their new friend, Paris, wind up in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. Is it possible that the bloodiest time in history can help Darrell heal? Or will disaster strike again?

Another fabulously absorbing delivery from KC Dyer, and a great end to the EAGLE GLEN TRILOGY. I've come to know and love these characters so much, it feels like they're still out there, living, traveling, existing. This is the kind of story that grips you completely and holds on long after you've finished the books. Not to mention the fact that you may never look at history the same again.