Like many of you, I got a lot less reading done this week than I’d originally anticipated, due to the general state of the world. But I really don’t want to give up on the time I spend reading, and especially the time I spend discussing it here.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of reading Cat Sebastian’s The Soldier’s Scoundrel. I picked this book out looking for a comfort read, which is almost a guarantee for me with this particular author. I was delighted to find that the book’s central theme is even more comforting than I realized: it’s all about the ways people help each other. Even those not in a romantic relationship, even those who might not know each other, or see each other face to face.

It also talks about finding unexpected comfort and a sense of rightness even in those moments that turn your life upside down, and that’s what today’s Friday Feature is all about.

In this passage Oliver, who has recently returned injured from war, is confronting his father about his association with Jack, a man of a very different social class, and one with whom Oliver is secretly falling in love:

Everything Oliver had experienced during the war had turned his world upside down, and he had come home trying to set it right side up again, only to fall in with a man who set the entire operation even more radically askew. And now, in this moldering old room, he felt that he had his feet firmly planted for the first time in years.

Cat Sebastian, The Soldier’s Scoundrel. 2016

The “moldering old room” here refers to Oliver’s father’s house, and I was intrigued by its appearance in a passage that otherwise hews firmly to images of “upside down/right-side up.” It’s a sudden insertion of a sense of place, at a moment where Oliver is searching for his. It’s also a reminder that enough of the right kind of change can make you stand firmer in spaces where you’d always felt out of place.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a comfort read right now. Buy link and CWs here.

What were your favorite words you read this week? Come share with me over on Twitter!