Valentine's Day was on Monday

I just finished reading 'The Secret Countess' by Eva Ibbotson. My heart is still thumping ecstatically and there are stars in my eyes. I think she is my favourite author.

Reading Eva Ibbotson is like going back in time. She writes about a time when men are gentlemen and living in a house with five guys (rowdy, messy, crass, strangely endearing guys) requires this sort of beacon of hope. I thought I had been disillusioned, but I read these books and I can pretend men like that exist.

Anyway, Eva Ibbotson is my hero. Her attention to detail, the way she weaves her story around the characters and vice versa, the language make me sign and laugh and cry. It makes me want to be a better writer. Heck, it makes me want to be a better person.

True, this is the same woman who wrote 'Which Witch?' and yes, her books are categorized in the teen romance section. But she is so much more than that.

It would take me pages and pages to describe the love affair that I am having with these books & I know that you have things to do, so I'll keep it short. I want to gush about Anna, the penniless Russian countess/maid or Rom, the banished Englishman in Brazil. I want to detail the things I learned about opera and ballet and house keeping in 1919. I want to share the quirky, loveable, human characters that populate her books and especially the grandiose romantic endings.

But I won't because, most of all, I want you to discover these things for yourself. I want you to fall in love with Guy Farnes from 'The Magic Flutes' & Quinton from 'The Morning Gift'. I want you to cheer for Harriet in "A Company of Swans' and your heart to break for Ellen in 'A Song For Summer'.

So do me a favour: The next time you are in the library, let your feet take you to the paperbacks in the teen section. Let your fingers drift over the spines in the 'I's and let one of her books fall into your hands.

You won't regret it.