At Tor, Molly Templeton dissects what exactly makes up a comfort read, noting that it’s not always the books with feel-good endings that we return to the most. “Reading about people processing the hardest things is the most comforting thing I can think of—there’s so much power in the mistakes, the missteps, the frustration, the love, the heart required to grow and change, or at least take the first steps on the way to trying,” Templeton writes. “Give me a bittersweet ending, a soupçon of hope, the sense that change is coming, if not here just yet.”
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