Discussion Post – Comfort Reads!

Hey readers,

I was talking to friend the other day and we got onto the topic of books (no surprise there) and we were talking about books that you revisit and reread to make you feel better, to get you out of a slump or just because you want to. These books are what makes reading fun and worthwhile and these often become favourites.

Below I’m going to list some of my favourites and why.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This is one of the first books I really remember loving when I was old enough to really pick the books that I wanted to read. It has everything and I reread it a couple of times a year.

Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart. I can’t really put my finger on what it was about this book that really made me pick it up at the library but romance and mystery and the fact I that I’ve enjoyed her Merlin seriea really helped. I’ve picked this up when I’ve been feeling down and it’s really made me feel better.

Here’s the synopsis: Bryony Ashley knows that Ashley Court, the grand estate, is both hell and paradise — once elegant and beautiful, yet shrouded in shadow. After the tragic death of her father, Bryony returns from abroad to find that his estate is to become the responsibility of her cousin Emory. Her family’s estate with its load of debt is no longer her worry. Still, her father’s final, dire warning about a terrible family curse haunts her days and her dreams. And there is something odd about her father’s sudden death…

Bryony has inherited the Ashley ‘Sight’ and so has one of the Ashleys. Since childhood the two have communicated through thought patterns, though Bryony has no idea of his identity. Devastated, she believes, that the mysterious stranger is her destiny… the lover-to-be who waits for her now at Ashley Court. Now she is determined to find him. But passion is not all that will greet Bryony upon her return — for the crumbling walls of the old mansion guard dark secrets, tragic memories… and inescapable peril.

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas. I have reread this book A LOT!! I’ve often picked it up to get me out of a slump; to just read over again the way that everything plays out and of course for that chapter 🤣. I think I’ve read it 2 or 3 times already this year. ( I don’t have a shiny copy of it yet so here is ACOTAR)

Any novel by Georgette Heyer. I bloody love these books and they take me back to when I first started reading them as a teen at home on the lounge. They always have adventure, romance and a HEA. How can you not love them. If you’re looking for one of hers to start with you can’t go past the Grand Sophy as shown by my very battered copy below.

The synopsis for The Grand Sophy – When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves his only daughter Sophia with his sister, Elizabeth Rivenhall, in Berkeley Square. Newly arrived from her tour of the Continent, Sophy invites herself into the circle of her relatives. When Lady Ombersley agrees to take in her young niece, no one expects Sophy, who sweeps in and immediately takes the town by storm. Beautiful, gay, impulsive, shockingly direct, Sophy sweeps into elegant London society and scatters conventions and traditions before her like wisps in a windstorm. Resourceful, adventurous and utterly indefatigable, Sophy is hardly the mild-mannered girl that the Rivenhalls expect when they agree to take her in. Kind-hearted Aunt Lizzy is shocked, and her arrogant stern cousin Charles Rivenhall, the Ombersley heir, vows to rid his family of her meddlesome ways by marrying her off.

But vibrant and irrepressible Sophy was no stranger to managing delicate situations. After all, she’d been keeping opportunistic females away from her widowed father for years. Staying with her relatives could be her biggest challenge yet. But Sophy discovers that her aunt’s family is in desperate need of her talent for setting everything right: her aunt’s husband is of no use at all, her ruthlessly handsome cousin Charles has tyrannical tendencies that are being aggravated by his pedantic bluestocking fiancee Eugenia Wraxton; her lovely cousin Cecelia is smitten with an utterly unsuitable suitor, a beautiful but feather-brained poet; her cousin Herbert is in dire financial straits and has fallen foul of a money-lender; and the younger children are in desperate need of some fun and freedom, and Sophy’s arrived just in time to save them all.

With her inimitable mixture of exuberance and grace, Sophy becomes the mainstay of her hilariously bedeviled family, as a horsewoman, social leader and above all, as an ingenious match-maker. Using her signature unorthodox methods, Sophy sets out to solve all of their problems. By the time she’s done, Sophy has commandeered household and Charles’s horses, but she finds herself increasingly drawn to her eldest cousin. Could it be that the Grand Sophy had finally met her match? Can she really be falling in love with him, and he with her? And what of his betrothal to grim Eugenia?

Let me know if there are books you regularly go back to, I’d love to know what they are and I’d love to see some of your well read copies of books. There’s nothing better than seeing a battered, bent, well read book!!

Lizbie x.