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Playing AwaySnagging.org In association with Amazon.co.ukOnline Shop | Property Guides | Kitchen & Home | Garden Tools | Power Tools | Consumer Electronics Get the Snagging Checklist Here!  List Price: £7.99 Amazon.co.uk's Price: £5.99 You Save: £2.00 (25%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813 EAN: 9780140290653 ISBN: 0140290656 Label: Penguin Manufacturer: Penguin Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: September 25, 2003 Publisher: Penguin Studio: Penguin Related Items: Editorial Review: 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. 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 Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Awful, terrible, don't buy into this drivel I love reading and quite like the 'chick lit' genre, but this book offended me from the very first page. Other reviewers have said it before, but the main character, Connie, is just so smug and self-satisfied that it is impossible to like or feel sympathy for her. I can't stand books that indulge in trite, pathetic characterisation. Parks spends the entire first two chapters describing how gorgeous the main character is, how lovely her house is, and so on. There isn't a single, likable character in this book. It's the first novel I've read by the author, and I will never read another. It was so bad, I actually threw it in the bin. Don't waste your money on this book. Rating:  - Definatly!I absolutly loved this book with a passion, i was so intrigued by its every page. i would recommend this to book to any female who wnats some spice in their life. you become so involved into this book that you feel a part of it, i became so engrossed in it and found it difficult to put down. definatly the best book i have read in a long time. Rating:  - Not your typical chick litThis is a great story! its very different from your usual novel showing a different angle but is wonderful! I could not put it down! The onlly problem I had was i read this after I had read young wives tales which confused me and ruined it a bit as I knew what would happen but despite that had a great time reading it Rating: - Unlikable . . . I received my copy of 'Playing Away' free with 'Eve' magazine. Against my better judgement I've started to read it; I wanted something light and easy going. What I've been lumbered with are impossibly beautiful, stereotypical, self-absorbed characters who are successful and wealthy without having to try. I'm on page 38. I'm finding Connie, the main character, very difficult to relate to; from her description she looks like Barbie and she's so smug. I don't know if I can make it to the end . . . Rating:  - An average novelPlaying away is written in the eyes of one person (Connie), the story is very easy to follow and is based around a group of friends living in London, This was a very easy book to read and did not require much imagination to feel involved with the characters. I felt that the novel was not very inspiring and so therefore bored me somewhat, this is not to say it is not everyone's cup of tea. Connie's seemingly perfect marriage does not give purpose to her affair so therefore did confuse me as to why the affair happened in the first place. I also felt that the characters in the novel had endless supplies of money, indulged in too much alcohol and regularly used the lesser favourable of swear words. As far as I am concerned there is no passion in the novel and so I found it hard to become indulged in the book itself. I feel that the follow on story `Young wives tales' may be more inspiring as the characters are now developed. All in all I wouldn't suggest that anyone would refrain from reading this novel but not to have too many high expectations before commencing a read.  Try searching the Internet for "Playing Away" or Ebay for "Playing Away". You might also be interested in the following great products:
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