Playing Away

It's sexy. It's roguish. It's hilarious. It's a sensational debut novel from London, a joyously comic take on modern marriage and its fallout. Single people may feel they have it rough...but wait until you see what happens when married folk fall in lust. Connie Green's life should be perfect. She has a hot career, her wonderful husband Luke, and a bunch of great girlfriends. But Connie has a big problem. She has just met overwhelmingly sexy John at a business conference. Her head and her heart said, "no way," but her traitorous body shrieked, "yes, YES!" Now Connie's deep into a tawdry affair, which is destroying her peace of mind and her grand plan for Happily Ever After. Maybe John is her destiny. After all, she's losing weight. It can't be a bad thing if she's losing weight. Can it? Connie longs to confide in her girlfriends. They've always discussed their sex lives before, preferably over cocktails. But this infidelity thing makes it a trifle awkward. Rose would be horrified. For her, it's pretty clear-cut; nice girls don't have affairs. And Daisy is too busy being in love. Sam knows about John but she doesn't want to believe it. How could and why would Connie cheat on her lovely husband? Sam's working hard to ignore the fact that Connie's shagging John every chance she gets. Maybe Lucy would understand; she's bonking a married man herself. Connie just wishes Lucy would be a little less cynical about the whole thing. What Connie wants is...Well, Connie's not quite sure what she wants. And that's exactly the trouble. A novel for every woman juggling the untidy mix of work, romance, sex, and marriage, Playing Away shimmers with equal parts comic relief and penetrating insight. As Connie and her brave, silly, colorful friends search for answers along the precarious paths of love and lust, we glimpse more than a little bit of ourselves. With bold strokes both moving and outrageously funny, Adele Parks has crafted a stunningly revealing portrait of the lives of hip, urban women, poised at the cusp of a millennium.