My friends know me as a “nerd,” meaning that I would choose to read a book over going out on any given day of the week (if the book is good of course.)

Personally, I do not see a problem with this.

According to an article by Lana Winter-Hébert on Lifehack, “no matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story.”

Simply allowing yourself to became immersed in a different world can allow you to forget about your current problems, and let your mind take you to another place where the conflicts are almost always resolved and life lessons can be taken from the pages and applied personally to your life.

In my time of stress, I turn to my favorite authors, whom I sometimes consider friends in a way, and put my life into perspective through the pages held in my hands.

One of my all-time favorite authors is without a doubt Joyo Moyes. As a known romance novelist, as well as an English journalist, Moyes’s novels tell relatable and unpredictable love stories that often parallel in some way to the reader’s personal life experiences. With an average rating of 4.67 on a 5-point scale on Goodreads, it is safe to say that Moyes has a clear talent for engaging the reader and is given a thumbs-up by the majority.

My personal favorites by Moyes are The Last Letter from Your Lover and, of course, the infamous Me Before You. My favorite things about these novels are the comfortable language in which they are written, as well as the lessons of love, hope, and morals that are presented throughout. Moyes does a terrific job of developing complex characters throughout her novels, allowing the reader to acquire feelings of sympathy and indifference with them as the plot develops.

Young Adult author Colleen Hoover is another novelist whom I hold to a high standard. Hoover’s novels Confess and November 9 are two of my absolute favorite reads, and I would highly recommend those to readers who love passion and creativity, since both plots surround relationships as well as aspects of art forms.

Hoover writes with a slightly smoother method than Moyes, being as Hoover’s audience is younger in comparison. Hoover’s intentions are also more obvious in comparison being as Moyes is writing to a more mature audience of readers, giving her freedom to add in far more details and developments.

Rupi Kaur, author of Milk and Honey, exemplifies profound imagery in her collections of poems, bringing tears to my eyes from page to page. According to Kaur’s website, the book can best be described as “the experience of violence. abuse. love. loss. femininity.”

When I first read this collection of poems, I did not know what I was in for. I was not prepared for the vivid imagery I read, but I am so glad that I encountered it. It forced me to see the harsh realities that many women have faced in the world, and gave me time to reflect on my own experience with relationships and other aspects of my life. When the poems finally came to an end, I had marked nearly every page because that is just how strong and empowering each individual poem was.

I have always had a love for reading and felt the security of pretending to be someone else for a little while. Over the years, many authors have had strong impacts on my life based on what I was going through at that point in my life, but Moyes, Hoover and Kaur have certainly been the most memorable.