Something about spring trips a switch in my head every year, where the heavy, introspective stories that compel me in fall and winter start to feel suffocating. Of course, I live in Minnesota, where it’s so blasted cold for four months, you have to focus on indoor activities or you’ll freeze your katushy off.

By March/April, though, I can’t care any longer about all those deep explications on the human condition, or even dredge up meaningful interest in anything too serious. A new atrocity in the Middle East, you say? Global warming will kill us all by 2020? Gosh, that’s awful. Why don’t you tell me about it while I whip up a nice batch of cookies for us over here. And when’s the last time you watched the movie, “Splash?”

Basically, if I’ve got a Faulkner or Anne Dillard tome on my nightstand in May, you can bet it’ll stay there untouched and unloved until next November. Maybe longer.

But I think it’s good for us to turn off the news and coldness when we can, to come into the light and reach for relief, because (and here comes my main rationalization for fluffy reading) eating only hardship makes us morbid and anxious, until all we feel is unhappiness and all we do in the world is breed more unhappiness, which is unhelpful on pretty much every front that counts. We also deny ourselves the kind of intercourse that makes us whole and capable, where we indulge in silliness or quirks or flights of imagination that cause others to smile and hope, help us all go out there and do what needs doing to pay the mortgage and care for the kids.

Which means we need a full spectrum of stories to muse over, including those with covers of half-fainting heroines at the mercy of some delicious-looking lover. Such ridiculousness soothes. It transports us to problems that are either gripping or not, but not truly consequential, and certainly not our own.

So here’s the question: What does a UV-deprived, shivering northerner read when she wants to let the sunshine in? I confess the series I’ve written, The Mer Chronicles, was motivated by this kind of need for diversion, but my novels are for others to peruse. For my own getaways, I’ve found tons of books that hit a particular note I like – not too heavy, not harmful, perfectly engaging. Here are a few I recommend, ranging from sweet to intense, and they all do the trick.

“What I Did for Love” by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

“Tender Rebel” and “Gentle Rogue” by Johanna Lindsey

“Blue-Eyed Devil” by Lisa Kleypas

“Dreams of a Dark Warrior” by Kresley Cole

“The Next Best Thing” by Jennifer Weiner

“Blackmoore: A Proper Romance” by Julianne Donaldson

“Passion” by Lisa Valdez

What do you read to get away from it all? Leave your ideas in the comment section below, please!