Dolores Monaco

Dear Mrs. Balogh, PLEASE do not impose upon my battered 82-year-old spirits any more hook-nosed, amputated and/or disfigured heroes. I am not by any means imploring the impossibly drop-dead gorgeous men of many, perhaps most, romance novels — just REQUESTING nothing so trying as Sydnam Butler, poor man. Allow me at least the fantasy of the ORDINARY, even moderate (is modest the term I am seeking here?) in appearance. (I resort to capital letters because your website does not provide italics — not complaining, mind you, just explaining. CAPITAL LETTERS do seem, even to me, the writer, rather like shouting, and I have learned they do denote shouting to many folks — although that’s someone else’s rule, which I do not accept. But then, I have never been one meekly to submit to arbitrary rules set outside myself — as my beleaguered parents learned to their despair. sigh. (Ah, at last! My computer — or perhaps your website — allow me to use CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis in some cases as well as permitting that use without the baggage many, even most, attach to them when written.

Um. Well, that’s my diatribe for now — back to a second reading of SOMEONE TO TRUST and the simply marvelous soul-soothing pleasures of an utterly splendid book and author! By the way, I prefer British spellings as the ONLY correct version of the English language, but something in my computer settings isn’t permitting that without an annoying red line beneath the British-spelled word. Oh well, perhaps computers HAVE come to rule the earth . . . .