Product Description

Connie has been happily married for a year. But she's just met John Harding. Imagine the sexiest man you can think of. He's a walking stag weekend. He's a funny, disrespectful, fast, confident, irreverent pub crawl. He is also completely unscrupulous. He's about to destroy Connie's peace of mind, her grand plan for living happily ever after with her gentle, loving husband Luke.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24924 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Adele Parks' Playing Away is founded on that well-worn adage: the grass is always greener. Connie and Luke have been married a year and they're both ecstatically happy. Or are they? The reader quickly realises that Connie isn't short for Constancy. Away on a business trip, her loins irrepressibly draw her to the devilishly attractive John Harding and she rushes headlong into a heated affair. Connie soon becomes Con-Artist as she deceives her decent but dull husband. While her lover woos her with evenings at out-of-the-way, grubby pubs and with late-night calls and faxes, after pub closing-time, declaring his longing for her, Connie begins to confuse lust with fate and deludes herself he could be the one.

In Playing Away, the author has entered dangerous, forbidden territory by writing from the perspective of the adulteress--a traditionally unsympathetic character. However, Adele Parks has succeeded in making the reader despise the character's actions, without rejecting Connie, who is attractive, candid and exhilarating. So many novels these days focus on finding Mr Right, it is refreshing to come across one that looks beyond the wedding and proceeds to undermine the traditional stereotype--only men are tempted to stray. A scorching, subversive debut novel, this novel has all the ingredients of a successful modern romance but with a healthy dose of reality.

Adele Parks joins the new elite of twenty-/thirtysomething female authors who are sustaining the spirit of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. By deepening the genre's significance and adding a sting to the tail, they are finding innovative ways to achieve more resonance with today's women. Nicola Perry

About the Author
Adele Parks lives in London. PLAYING AWAY is her first novel.

Customer Reviews

Playing Away - Read it and weep.
There's absolutely no way anyone can compare this book to the influx of "Bridget Jones Lookalikes" that have flooded the market over the past couple of years. I bought this book because I was intrigued by the description on the back, but I can honestly say it doesn't do it justice. I found this book one of the most compelling, heartbreaking and exciting I've ever read. If anyone's ever been in the position Connie finds herself in, you will smile when you recognise yourself in Adele Park's achingly good descriptions of the highs and lows that go with the territory of having an affair. It's so well written and sensitively true to life, that I felt throughly disappointed when I'd finished it. Not because the ending wasn't good - but because I couldn't read it anymore. Accusing "Playing Away" of being a "girly book" is a travesty. Thank you Adele, for writing something that I could have written myself if only I had the talent. An absolutely brilliant book.

Entertaining ..and right on!!!
For anyone blissfully married, not so happily married or looking for a bit of excitement...needs to read this book. Fantastic and entertaining. Pulitzer Prize winning, NO...Extremly fun, YES!!
it took very little time to read this fab little novel. When I got to the last page of this little gem, I looked at my husband in a whole new light...Thank goodness for small miracles!!!!

It managed to capture the true feelings of what it is like being in a marriage and thinking the grass is greener on the other side. Believe me, read the book, it is safer than having an affair.

Totally un-put-down-able!
What a read, everything, from the humour, the lust, the friends- to the 'big affair' was compelling. i was amused, touched, romanced, saddened and thrilled by the story, from start to finish. My attention was grasped from the prologue and just didnt let go, it was easy to relate with Connie and feel her feelings, think her thoughts. We all have friends to whom we can match with Connies and Adele Parks manner of describing her characters is excellent, giving her reader the full picture. This is the first book to have made me shed a tear, and as soon as i reached the end i turned back to the beginning, wanting to relive the whole story all over again. However, my sister in law has tonight dragged the book, from my reluctant grasp with the promise of returning it when she has read it.........................will i ever see it again! Aaaaarrrggghh!