It sounds like you might really love the World of the White Rat books by T Kingfisher. Paladins on quests! Some dead bodies, but mostly things like people whose magic makes them sneeze and also perfumers who fall in love with paladins who like to knit socks.
Can you tell what my gentle escapism world is? Between T Kingfisher and Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children books, I have a soft place to land when things get stressful.
One of my favourite series is a series of portal (and reverse portal) fantasies, and the author (Seanan McGuire) actually addresses this specifically in Every Heart A Doorway:
Boys are “too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It’s not innate. It’s learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
In general, I agree with the poster who said that it’s because women have more in general that they need to escape. But when I read this passage it stuck with me, because it named a trend I hadn’t noticed until then.
Rupert Holmes wrote a fantastic book called Murder Your Employer. It’s fun, it’s a great read, it’s got charm from here until the end of time.
He also wrote “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”.
It’s the best combination of creative products ever.