Mary Anne, a new member of Sweet Savage Flame, reviews Out of the Shadows” by Stella March, a romance novel published in 1967 and reprinted in 1982
Note: This review was written by the newest member of our Sweet Savage Flame family, Mary Anne, aka ArkansasAnnie! We’re delighted to welcome her aboard, as she has so much valuable information and opinions to share with us.
Mary Anne is a reader, reviewer, and writer. Read more about her on our About page.
Out of the Shadows by Stella March, Marjorie Bell MarshallRating:
Published: 1967
Illustrator: Unknown
Imprint or Line: Sapphire Romance; Dolphin Romance
Published by: Hamlyn Paperbacks, RCA Marketing
Genres: Category Romance, Contemporary Romance, Vintage Romance
Pages: 176
Format: Hardcover, Paperback
Buy on: Amazon, AbeBooks
Reviewed by: Arkansas Annie
SPOILER FREE REVIEW
The Book
Out of the Shadows by Stella March was first published in 1967 and has been reprinted several times. This Sapphire edition was republished in 1982.
The Publisher
Sapphire Romances was a line of American paperback romances, mostly contemporary, issued by RCA Direct Marketing in 1982. I’m pretty sure they were available only through mail order; there’s no price on the covers.
The books were reprints of British originals, and The Hamlyn Publishing Group often appears on the copyright page. The venture lasted only a little while but produced some remarkable reading.
The Author
A bit about the author, drawn from her Wikipedia page. Stella March was the pen name of Marjorie Bell Marshall. She wrote twenty-three romance novels published between 1956 and 1986. From 1967 to 1969, she was the Chairman of the Romantic Novelists Association, the British equivalent of the RWA.
She died in 2020 at age 104.
You read that right, folks.
The Plot
Diana Farrington is a young woman living in the English countryside with her family. She gets the shock of her life when her parents reveal something they should’ve told her much earlier. Diana is adopted.
She takes the news poorly, to say the least. Diana falls into what sounds like a fugue state, a temporary mental disorder that makes her lose touch with reality and run away with no destination.
Luckily, she ends up spending a night in the barn at the country estate of Alan Weymouth, a wealthy London businessman. He’s intrigued by this wanderer. She’s lovely, charming, and adventuresome. And as mixed-up as he is.
Alan seems enviable on the outside. But he’s harboring a secret, a “sword of Damocles” hanging over his head by a hair. Years before, when he was a commercial airplane pilot, a mechanical failure led to an accident that left a bone chip suspended inside his skull.
Further head trauma might dislodge it and kill him. It can be surgically removed, but the odds of him surviving the operation are only fifty-fifty. Understandably, Alan decided to do nothing—except take care to avoid further accidents.
He tries to persuade Diana to reconcile with her parents; she refuses. He’s more successful in getting her a sales job at his Harrods-like department store in London.
Alan and Diana become close. Inevitably, they fall in love. They’re clearly made for each other. But their unresolved issues make for complications.
Which is as far as I’ll go in describing the plot. I hate spoilers!
My Opinion
I love this novel because it does what I think a romance should, first and foremost, do. It presents the story of a love that deeply moved me. I could feel everything the protags felt. And they feel a lot, from the heights of joy to the pits of despair. Alan, Diana, and their relationship well and truly come alive. I can easily relate to this couple.
If you enjoy a ride on an emotional roller coaster or if you go for romances that depict how love can change everything—and do so more convincingly than in the usual redemption storyline—I heartily recommend Out of the Shadows.
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| Overall: | 4.8 |
Synopsis
When Diana Farrington met Alan Weymouth, she had just learned something about herself that knocked the ground from under her feet, and she was hurt and bitter.
By a strange coincidence, she came into Alan’s life when he, too, was at his lowest ebb, facing the future without hope and finding life empty and meaningless.
Out of the Shadows by Stella March
Hi, Mary Anne. Welcome to SSF and great to have you on the masthead!
Great review. It seems like, with “Out of the Shadows” that Ms. Marshall-or Ms.March to use her pen name-wrote a book about two people who were not perfect, who had issues going on and dealt with them the best way they could while finding love. That sounds extremely rare, especially in the field of romanelandia, where the goal of most authors is to create “perfect” characters with perfect lives. I too love books that make me feel the gamut of emotions and “Out of the Shadows” sounds like it would.