GROTTIES DON’T KISS, by Clinton Trowbridge, The Vineyard Press, Port Jefferson, N.Y.; paperback $19.95 211 pages.

The very things that make “Grotties Don’t Kiss: A Prep School Memoir” a good read are the reasons it leaves readers wanting more.

In this often engaging memoir of his years at the Groton School, Clinton Trowbridge captures all the angst and antics of adolescent boys. The Sedgwick resident attended the famous boarding school in Groton, Mass., from 1940 to 1946.

The son of an Episcopal minister, Trowbridge’s parents paid just $400 in tuition per year because his father was a friend of the headmaster. The writer speculates that it was cheaper for his family to send him away to school than to feed him. “A gargantuan eater, I consumed that much in boiled potatoes alone,” he writes in the opening chapter.

Trowbridge keeps the focus on life at school, sprinkling the book’s 27 chapters with glimpses of summers with his family on Hancock Point. His descriptions of those days, especially in a later chapter about his first love, are an idyllic counterpoint to the drudgery of school days.

While he recaptures the feelings of young men during World War II, he presents them without the perspective of adulthood or time. Reading “Grotties Don’t Kiss” is like sneaking a peak at Clintie Trowbridge’s slightly censored diary.

Some of the incidents described, most notably an instance of sexual abuse by an older student, cry out for a grown-up’s perspective. It also would have been more satisfying for readers if he had told what happened to some of the characters, especially that first love, Kate. The book jacket bio reveals that his wife is named Elaine, and the book is dedicated to her.

But an author must save some things for his next book. Perhaps it will all come out when and if Trowbridge chronicles his years at Princeton University, the college he’s headed to at the end of “Grotties Don’t Kiss,” and the Marine Corps.

At the very least, the book could be used to dissuade teen-agers from thinking that life at boarding school would be better than life at home.

THE ROMANCE WITH NANCE, by Rob Files, Booklocker.com, Inc., Bangor, 2002, 147 pages, paperback, $12.95 plus shipping.

Writing love letters – the ones written on colored stationery and sent off by “snail” mail rather than e-mail – is an art few couples indulge in any more. It is considered to be an old-fashioned way to carry on a romance. But one couple found love when they least expected it, because they took the time to put pen to paper and write each other.

Rob Files, 80, of Dedham has chronicled the transformation of his relationship with Nance Wing, 78, from acquaintances to lovers in his book “The Romance With Nance.” The book, published by a Bangor-based e-books company, is a collection of the letters the two sent to each other after mutual friends introduced them at a 1995 New Year’s Eve party in Naples, Fla.

Files and Wing had much in common – both were widowed, had been married twice, and grew up within miles of each other in New Jersey. Something clicked between the two immediately, and Files began writing Wing when he returned home to Maine and his accounting business. They would not meet again until May 8, 1996.

The letters are full of references to their high school and college days, World War II and the songs of that era, as well as detailed descriptions of their daily lives. They sweetly capture the burgeoning romance between two ordinary people.

Although the letters are intimate portraits, some details are left out. Files refers to his second wife in a letter as his “ex-wife,” but in his introductory bio states that the two were not divorced until the following year. He also goes into the bathroom to call Wing on the telephone so his son will not hear them talking, but why he hides the relationship is never explained.

“The feelings expressed in these letters may enable others to realize how precious life is and how important are the ‘little things’ – that love is out there waiting to be found, and, most importantly, to be fully expressed to those near and dear to one regardless of one’s age,” writes the author in a short afterward.

Files and Wing’s relationship is proof of that.