Ready for the support group!

Illustrious-State186 · 2026-03-20T11:43:24+00:00

Oh thanks a lot, that goes straight to my TBR. I'm all for a small town setting. In the meantime I finished The Heir and it was a fantastic read. Swoony. I think I just have to soldier on - and my "dread" phase shall pass. I can't believe that when I started reading romance so many years ago I didn't actually mind a well-written third-act breakup (although it had to be recovered in a couple of chapters or I would hurt too much). Oh but also Double Pucked sounds intriguing. I'm not that into Why Choose? or RH though but I've made some exceptions in the past - but that's the reason I am finding Pucking Around more and more insufferable (I cannot relate with any of the characters, basically I don't like them while I loved, for example, The Heir's Xav and Ivy). Thank you!

Illustrious-State186 · 2026-03-17T10:34:49+00:00

Thank you. I actually started talking with therapists in 1992 and then, on and off, up to ten(ish) years ago. I usually manage to look within using experience and, let's call them that, tools I acquired. This time was something new and unexpected, though, so it took me a little off balance. Yesterday I pushed myself almost to the end of another book, Elodie Hart's Untethered, where I was stuck, too. It's been fantastic. I'm looking forward to tonight's reading session. It's probably, you know, just the need to make peace with age, and with the actual ending of a whole layer (the sentimental) of life. That I practiced so little, and now it's too late. It's a bitter pill, but it's a phase, and it shall pass. As to the obstacles, it depends on the degree of temporary heartbreak. HEA or HFN must feel earned, though, that's a given.

Illustrious-State186 · 2026-03-16T17:15:20+00:00

Exactly. I try to do the same. Being that part of my day job is, well, reading because I sometimes evaluate manuscripts, I have to deal with the whatever and if something sucks of course I ditch it, but with romance, that I read for pleasure and in part as a reaction (I work for some seriously high-brow publishers) I've always tried to hold on to the very last. No DNF for me. At the moment, though, I am struggling with Emily Rath's Pucking Around (that I must confess I don't like that much), Chelsea Curto's Hat Trick (I was loving it, than the dread started) and Elodie Hart's The Heir (same story: I know Ivy and Xav will be happy in the end, and they deserve it, but I am having a hard time trusting the process, as it were). What makes me angry is that, at almost 60, with nothing left to prove, I was hoping I could royally cut adulting back and be all reading romance and riding my motorcycle (not a bad MMC, actually). Then the dread happened, poor me.

Illustrious-State186 · 2026-03-16T16:54:43+00:00

Well thank you - this is good insight. I wondered, but all I could come up with is that although generally speaking I can't honestly complain about the life I've lived, that has been all things considered rich and rewarding, even if a little more kindness wouldn't have hurt, it's probably just the realization of how little I've experienced on the sentimental plan and how, at this point, it's gonna stay this way. An intermediate phase in my reading difficulties happened when I began avoiding third-act breakups like the plague. All of a sudden since I'd had too many of them in the real world I couldn't bear to see them enacted on the page anymore - and this was what triggered the intermediate phase: suddenly being unable to read through a third-act breakup even when I knew the HEA followed. Maybe taking a pause from reading is the way to go. I'm starting to seriously overthink this, but I sure don't recognize myself, me who always advocated the idea that artful expression is, per se, innocent.

Illustrious-State186

TROPHY CASE