In wanting to read a happy book?

[ICantCopeAnymore]

I suffer with PTSD and anxiety and I love reading. I'm really struggling with my mental health which is very up and down and books used to be my happy place.

More recently, I've found that everything I read is miserable. Full of death, cancer, illness, murder etc. Even the women's fiction books like Katie Fforde type literature have started going the same way, always including a young widow, a dreadful car accident, funerals and dying children. I was recommended "The Lido" and I've never sobbed so much through a book. It was supposed to be an uplifting, heartwarming read and it was about dreadful loneliness and death.

These things are all really triggering for me at the moment - AIBU in just wanting an escape from hospitals and death? I feel like I can't read or watch TV any more without being bombarded with misery.

Can anyone recommend anything to read that isn't traumatic please?

Thank you

Another vote for Enchanted April!

Barbara Pym books are gentle and funny (no dead children)

A Room With A View is my go to for gorgeous comfort reading. As is any Austen!

The Keeper of Lost Things is such a warm and lovely read. Amanda's Wedding always makes me laugh. Also The Hobbit... Classic.

A couple of years ago, I had a very traumatic time with a severe bout of health anxiety. I couldn't read or watch anything that might be a trigger. I took comfort in Terry Pratchett, the Tudor series by Philippa Gregory, Harry Potter and also the Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard - a good family saga. There are some difficult episodes and death, but it's written in a very solid and comforting way that it doesn't make it so difficult to read.