A Darker Shade of Love

Book excerpt: It is London and it is the sixties and for Angela everything is perfect. She is young and beautiful, able to enjoy the new freedom to the full. As a debutante and then as a model there is no shortage of young men vying for her attention, and so far her five years in London have been one long party: the men change and the jobs change but the party goes on. But sexual freedom does not live up to its billing and a life drifting from one casual affair to another leaves Angela restless and unfulfilled. Steve changes all that; he is different. At first she finds him annoyingly persistent in his advances but somehow he gradually breaks down her defences. He seems to understand her and care for her in a different way from the young men she has known. Gradually she begins to feel that she might be in love with Steve and soon they are married. Then the real Steve emerges: the bully, the liar, the pervert. Angela finds herself the sexual prisoner of a man she hardly knows. Under a barrage of psychological and physical pressure, Angela is forced by Steve to indulge in acts which appall her and which she is ashamed to admit to anyone. Soon all of her old friendships are gone and even her mother is estranged from her by her demonic husband. A Darker Shade of Love is the harrowing story of a 'nice' girl for whom the 'swinging sixties' becomes a nightmare of depravity. It is at once compelling and unsettling as it recounts a journey into a sexual hell.