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

[AllFakeFurCoatAndNoSpanx]

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!

[Thecrabbypatty]

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

[MinesaPinot]

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.