What happens when you crave comfort but keep choosing chaos?
I started January with a plan. After months of heavy literary fiction and experimental narratives, I wanted easy. I wanted familiar. I wanted the kind of books that feel like sliding into a warm bath—which for me means historical romance with witty banter and guaranteed happy endings. The kind I used to devour before life got complicated and my TBR got pretentious.
So I pulled three historical romances off my shelf. I was ready to coast through January on pure escapism, wrapped in Regency ballrooms and dukes who learn emotional vulnerability through the power of love.
Except that’s not what happened.
Because apparently, my brain had other plans. Between those safe romance choices, I kept picking up books based purely on vibes and covers. Glorious Exploits with its absurdly funny illustration. The Blanket Cats promising cozy comfort. And every single one of them was darker, deeper, and more emotionally complex than I bargained for.
I wanted safety. My subconscious chose devastation. Welcome to my reading life, where what I crave and what I actually choose are in constant, fascinating conflict.
The Monthly Thesis
Here’s the paradox: I deliberately returned to historical romance for comfort, but I accidentally built a reading list about people who stop pretending everything’s fine.
The romances gave me banter and safety, sure. But even those were about heroines refusing to perform perfection and heroes learning that “proper” is code for “boring.” And the books I impulse-grabbed? All about people forced to stay present in their mess instead of escaping into prettier versions of reality.
My January wasn’t random. It was me saying “I want comfort” while simultaneously choosing books that asked, “But what if you stayed in the discomfort long enough to find something real?”
Book-by-Book Mini Reviews
The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu
⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Urban Fiction | 304 pages
The Premise: Seven interconnected stories about people renting cats (and their special blankets) for three-day intervals. It’s “ordinary Japanese people quietly falling apart” meets “the cats who witness everything they can’t say out loud.” I saw a cozy cover and thought I was getting Hygge: The Novel. I was wrong.
Why It Stuck With Me: I picked this up because the cover promised warmth and comfort, literal blanket cats! And instead got a masterclass in how loneliness looks when it’s wearing business casual. There’s the woman who embezzled money to maintain appearances. The grandfather with dementia who remembers the cat but not his daughter. The blankets are never washed between renters, and that detail, the deliberate keeping of someone else’s sadness, their scent, their story, quietly squeezed my heart.
This was supposed to be my palate cleanser. It became my most emotionally complex read of the month.
Read This If: You loved Convenience Store Woman or Strange Weather in Tokyo, you’re okay with bittersweet instead of cozy, or you’ve learned that the books with the softest covers often cut the deepest.
Not That Duke by Eloisa James
⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Historical Romance | 384 pages
The Premise: Lady Stella, bespectacled wallflower with a sharp mind and zero patience for shallow nobility, gets scandal-married to the Duke of Huntington. He wanted perfection in a wife. She wanted anything but a peacock duke. Neither gets what they expected, which turns out to be exactly what they needed.
Why It Stuck With Me: This is why I came back to historical romance. Not just for the guaranteed HEA, but for heroines like Stella who refuse to sand down their edges to fit society’s mold. She’s clumsy, bookish, speaks her mind, owns her desire, wears her glasses, and the narrative rewards her for it. The duke doesn’t fix her, but insteasd he realizes his checklist for perfection was boring as hell and falls for her chaos instead.
After reading of literary fiction where characters suffer beautifully but don’t necessarily get happy endings, there’s something revolutionary about a genre that says, “You deserve love exactly as you are, weird quirks included.”
Read This If: You want enemies-to-lovers without the angst overload, steam that comes from genuine compatibility, or proof that the right person makes you feel more yourself, not less.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Fantasy | 133 pages
The Premise: Two sisters sing to magical willows by a faerie river. When jealousy, land-hungry suitors, and ancient obligations collide, their bond is tested in ways that follow the brutal emotional arc of a murder ballad—but maybe, just maybe, this time the ending can be different.
Why It Stuck With Me: I grabbed this because I judged the book by the gorgeous cover expecting something whimsical (this is my first El-Mohtar work). What I got was a 133-page gut punch about sisterhood as the most underrated relationship in fiction. While everyone’s obsessed with romance, El-Mohtar writes devotion that reaches beyond death, about sisters who’d rewrite reality before letting each other go.
It’s fantasy, but the emotional truth is so raw it hurts. Not the comfort read I thought I needed, but possibly the one I did.
Read This If: You want folklore that centers sisters over suitors, lyrical prose that demands to be read aloud, or you believe the most powerful magic is choosing each other again and again.
These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
⭐⭐⭐ | Contemporary Fiction | 400 pages
The Premise: Four fractured siblings return to their billionaire father’s private island for his memorial, only to discover he’s orchestrated one final mind game: complete his assigned tasks or lose everything. Alice’s task seems simple, stay for a week. For someone whose superpower is disappearing, it becomes an impossible test of endurance, especially when her one-night-stand turns out to be daddy’s right-hand man.
Why It Stuck With Me: Sarah MacLean’s first contemporary after writing Regency romance (which I loved), and she brought all that family dysfunction with her. This book is about what happens when you can’t run away anymore. When staying becomes the only option, and you have to face every pattern, every wound, every complicated truth you’ve spent years avoiding.
Watching her white-knuckle through staying, not because someone convinced her she was worthy but because leaving would be the easy way out, felt like witnessing someone scale Everest in real time.
Read This If: You love family dramas where everyone’s a little right and a little wrong, messy sibling dynamics that feel achingly real, or you’ve ever realized your coping mechanism is leaving before anyone can leave you first.
Conversations on Faith by Antonio Spadaro and Martin Scorsese
⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Biography | 2h 14m (audiobook)
The Premise: Scorsese and Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro discuss how Catholicism permeates his films, from Mean Streets to Silence, exploring guilt, redemption, and finding God in messy, violent stories. It’s the director’s commentary track for Scorsese’s soul.
Why It Stuck With Me: This audiobook gave me the theological deep dive I didn’t know I needed. Faith, for Scorsese, isn’t about having tidy answers—it’s about wrestling honestly with doubt, darkness, and the hunger for grace even when God seems silent.
He made Silence, a film about God’s apparent absence, and still shows up to Mass. That tension, that commitment to staying in the question rather than fleeing to false certainty, felt oddly relevant to my own January paradox of craving easy reads but choosing complicated ones.
Read This If: You love Scorsese’s films and want the theological deep dive, you’re interested in faith that doesn’t shy away from complexity, or you believe art can be a spiritual practice even when it’s messy.
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
⭐⭐⭐⭐.75 | Historical Fiction | 289 pages
The Premise: Two unemployed Syracusan potters stage Greek tragedy using Athenian prisoners of war. They speak with Irish accents in ancient Sicily (which absolutely should not work but somehow does).Think rarefied intellect, moral rot, and the ethics of war filtered through the redemptive chaos of theatre, with humor so dark it hums.
Why It Stuck With Me: I once again, judged this book entirely by its cover. The illustration was absurdly funny, and I thought, “This will be light historical fiction with quirky characters.” Reader, it was not.
This book asks: What do you do when you can’t save them? When the ending is already written, the death is already inevitable if not scheduled? Do you walk away because caring is pointless, or do you stay because bearing witness matters even when you can’t change the outcome?
Watching these two potters choose to give their condemned prisoners dignity, theater, temporary transcendence, knowing it won’t save anyone, became the emotional thesis for my entire reading month. Art creates real connection without fixing structural violence. That’s both its limitation and its entire point.
Read This If: You want literary fiction that’s emotionally intelligent and darkly funny, you appreciate flawed characters making art for all the wrong (and right) reasons, or you’ve ever wondered why we create beauty in ugly times.
The Famous Heroine & The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh
⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Historical Romance | 514 pages (two novels)
The Premise:
The Famous Heroine: Cora Downes saves a drowning child, gets thrust into London’s marriage market, and ends up married to peacock-dressed Lord Francis Kneller in what both assume will be platonic. Then comes the hilariously awkward wedding night where they discover they’ve been reading each other completely wrong.
The Plumed Bonnet: Governess-turned-heiress Stephanie Gray travels to claim her inheritance wearing a ridiculous plumed bonnet over a shabby dress, gets robbed twice, catches the eye of the Duke of Bridgwater, and they build trust one conversation at a time.
Why It Stuck With Me: This is comfort reading that doesn’t insult my intelligence. Both heroines act instead of waiting to be rescued. Both heroes learn that their idea of “perfect” was actually code for “boring.” And both couples choose each other through daily proximity, awkward conversations, and the radical vulnerability of showing up as themselves.
This is why I returned to historical romance after years away. Not because it’s shallow or easy, but because it takes the radical stance that ordinary people deserve extraordinary love, quirks and all.
Read This If: You want historical romance that explores female agency without being preachy, you believe humor is emotional intelligence, or you’re tired of instalove and ready for “we built this through a thousand small moments.”
What I Learned: The Paradox I Didn’t Know I Was Exploring
Here’s what I learned staring at my January stack: I deliberately chose three historical romances for safety, then accidentally filled the gaps with books that refused to let me hide.
The romances gave me what I wanted. I enjoyed the banter and guaranteed happy endings. Heroines get to be messy and still find love. They were my safety net, my reminder that some stories end well, that being yourself can be enough.
But the other books? They were what I apparently needed. Stories about people who couldn’t escape into prettier versions of reality. Who had to stay present with loneliness (The Blanket Cats), family dysfunction (These Summer Storms), impossible choices (Glorious Exploits), and the kind of devotion that hurts (The River Has Roots).
I wanted comfort. My reading choices said, “Not yet. First, let’s sit with some harder truths.”
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe the point isn’t choosing comfort OR depth, but letting them coexist. The historical romances reminded me that happy endings exist. The literary fiction reminded me why they matter, because real life is complicated and messy and doesn’t always resolve neatly.
My Reading Method: Cover Judging as a Spiritual Practice
I approached January like someone who’d forgotten how to trust her instincts, then decided to trust them completely.
Three books were deliberate returns to old favorites. The rest? Pure vibes. I judged Glorious Exploits by its funny cover and picked up The Blanket Cats because it looked cozy. I grabbed The River Has Roots because I was drawn to the promise of whimsy. I listened to the Scorsese audiobook while cooking because faith and pasta felt appropriately Catholic together.
I didn’t analyze. I didn’t optimize. I just… picked books that called to me, then dealt with the emotional consequences later.
Turns out, my subconscious has better taste than my carefully curated TBR. Who knew?
The Biggest Surprise
Glorious Exploits was the book I least expected to devastate me. That cover! Those Irish-accented ancient Sicilians! It looked quirky and light.
Instead, it became a meditation on art’s power and limitations. On what you do when you can’t save them but you stay anyway. On creating beauty knowing it won’t change the ending.
I picked it up thinking it would be fun historical fiction. I closed it thinking about every time I’ve created something knowing it wouldn’t fix anything, but did it anyway because making beautiful things in ugly times is its own kind of resistance.
Cover judging: not recommended for avoiding emotional devastation, highly recommended for stumbling into books that change you.
What This Month Says About Me
January taught me that craving comfort and choosing complexity aren’t opposites: they’re two parts of the same conversation.
I returned to historical romance because I needed proof that being yourself can be enough, that love doesn’t require perfection, that some stories get happy endings. Those romances were my baseline, my reminder that joy exists and I’m allowed to want it.
But I also kept picking up books that asked harder questions. About loneliness that doesn’t look lonely. About staying when leaving would be easier. About creating beauty when it won’t save anyone. About the gap between who we pretend to be and who we actually are.
Maybe I’m learning that you can want safety and truth at the same time. That sometimes the books with the softest covers cut deepest. That judging books by their covers is actually a legitimate reading strategy if you’re willing to be surprised.
My reading list this month wasn’t contradictory. It was honest. I wanted comfort, but I also wanted substance. I wanted to escape, but I also wanted to sit with some harder truths. I wanted banter and guaranteed HEAs, and I wanted books that didn’t let me look away from complicated realities.
Turns out, you can have both. You just need really good historical romance and a willingness to be emotionally destroyed by books with cat illustrations.
So here I am, seven books deep into January, realizing that returning to historical romance wasn’t retreat—it was coming home with better questions. And the books I grabbed on instinct? They were answering questions I didn’t know I was asking.
My reading life is a constant negotiation between what I think I want and what I actually need. January proved that sometimes the best approach is to stop negotiating and just let both exist at once.
Pass me another historical romance and a box of tissues. I’ve got a TBR to build that makes absolutely no logical sense but perfect emotional sense.
💬 Let’s Chat
Do you ever notice a gap between what you want to read and what you actually choose? What does your January reading say about you?
Have you returned to any old favorite genres recently? What brought you back?
Drop your reading paradoxes in the comments. I want to know what your TBR reveals when you stop overthinking it.
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