Beyond Selidor

You're welcome!

I really try to be careful when criticising things, because not all reading needs to be worthy and high stakes and literary and thought-provoking, and if people want to spend their spare time resting their brains in the undemanding, literary equivalent of pick-and-mix sweets, they should feel no need to justify their choices. I read a lot of silly fluff myself, and I don't want to be a hypocrite about these things.

It's more that this kind of 'cosiness' doesn't work for me. (I'm pretty sure it's because I have actually worked in a lot of customer service roles in the kinds of settings people pick as being cosy and conflict free: bakeries, cafes, libraries and so on, and there's something really irritating to me about seeing these places presented as just a cool spot to hang out with your friends, without any awful behaviour from customers, or irreconcilable interpersonal conflicts between coworkers, or really any need to do any work at all. It's as if the authors think of bakeries, coffeeshops, indie bookshops, florists, libraries etc as these kinds of fantasy setting with no conflict, where every colleague is automatically part of a close-knit found family, and work is incidental.)

I felt very seen in discovering that at least a couple of reviewers felt the same way!