Rating: 
Summary: HAD to put down!
Review: Boy, was this book a mistake to buy. I've read about twenty pages and just don't want to read another word.
When the story opens, the protagonist is meeting and flirting with a man she's met at a business affair (pun intended). First thing that annoyed me -- why would she get drunk and raunchy with a guy in front of her colleagues? Would any of them respect her at the next business meeting??
Connie is a self-adoring, obnoxious, spoiled woman who doesn't deserve what she has. Married to Luke, blessed with good health, good looks, good job, great apartment, her life is filled with sex, parties and happiness.
So what would any intelligent woman do in this circumstance? She has an affair with a guy who has slept with ninety nine women (ewwww) and wants to make her happy 100th. Not that Connie is so pure herself. We hear in great detail that she slept with pretty much anything that walked for any reason whatsoever before she got married.
One would think she'd have gotten it out of her system, eh.
The story may very well end up being one where Connie gets what's coming to her, but I don't care to hang around for another 330 pages to find out. It's not a moral issue, it's more that Connie is completely unappealing to me. She's an embarrassment to womankind and there seems to be nothing redeeming about her. She's the kind of woman where if she were a guy a woman's book would never expect you to sympathize.
I have another book of Ms Parks' to read. Maybe that one will be better. Sure hope so.
Rating: 
Summary: Wake Up Before it's Too Late
Review: Connie Green, married to a wonderful man Luke for one year, meets a walking stag John Harding in Paris on a business trip. She makes it clear to him that she is a married woman but he doesn't care. He just has one thing on his mind--sex. Connie knows that the one person good for her is Luke. But she gives in to John's sexual wiles with hopes that he will come in time to romance her which is less likely to happen. Her close friend Lucy, who has had her share of married lovers, gives her the 411 on being involved with a married man. But Connie buys too much into the fantasy which destroys her peace of mind and she has to come face to face with herself, her husband and friends.
In addition to what is happeneing to Connie, her friend Daisy is engaged to be married while another friend Rose(sister to Daisy) has her own set of marital problems.
This book is a good read. The author does a superb job covering marriage and infidelity in her fictional debut. This book was too hard to put down. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen next in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Wake Up Before it's Too Late
Review: Connie Green, married to a wonderful man Luke for one year, meets a walking stag John Harding in Paris on a business trip. She makes it clear to him that she is a married woman but he doesn't care. He just has one thing on his mind--sex. Connie knows that the one person good for her is Luke. But she gives in to John's sexual wiles with hopes that he will come in time to romance her which is less likely to happen. Her close friend Lucy, who has had her share of married lovers, gives her the 411 on being involved with a married man. But Connie buys too much into the fantasy which destroys her peace of mind and she has to come face to face with herself, her husband and friends.
In addition to what is happeneing to Connie, her friend Daisy is engaged to be married while another friend Rose(sister to Daisy) has her own set of marital problems.
This book is a good read. The author does a superb job covering marriage and infidelity in her fictional debut. This book was too hard to put down. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen next in the book.
Rating: 
Summary: An Affair to Remember....
Review: Connie Green, the protagonist in the novel "Playing Away" is directionless, selfish and self-focused. It is a bold move on the part of first time novelist Adele Parks to create a "heroine" who is so difficult to like. While I did not like Connie Green as a character, I did enjoy the story--it was obvious that she was making a horrible mistake as she slid into the tawdry affair with John Harding. And the author does not spare the reader by portraying the affair as anything other than what it is--lust, and sex. Yet even though I knew Connie was making the mistake of a lifetime, and that she well deserves the inevitable consequences, I followed the plot with interest-- Two problems for me were the one-dimensional representation of Luke, the cuckolded husband, and Connie's "remorse." The remorse and the subsequent ending seemed out-of -place with the honesty of the rest of the book somehow. Anything this writer produces will have interest for me.
Rating:
Summary: The Real Bridget Jones Diary
Review: For us yanks, there just isn't anything this pervy and laced with that marvelous Masterpiece theatre dialogue in the American publishing scene. A romance novel for the new millenium.
Rating:
Summary: She's no Bridget Jones
Review: I checked this out from the library and I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. The Bridget Jones bandwagon is being jumped on by all and sundry, but this is one book that needs to be kicked off.
The protagonist is so self-absorbed and dull it's hard to believe she got anyone to marry her--but then, as she'll gladly tell you, she's unbelievably gorgeous and smart, plus always decked out in designer-label clothes. When Bridget Jones mentioned brand names, it was a funny insight into a neurotic mind. When this girl does it, it's just vain.
I also wasn't too nuts about the way Parks had the 'bad guy' lover describe her beauty back to her as a very non-clever way to remind us yet again how utterly fabulous the heroine is. 'Cause hey, if HE'S doing the describing, it's not like she's bragging or anything!
One other thing that utterly set my teeth on edge was the way she described rising too late on the morning she and her husband were giving a party for their friends. She says something like, 'You know how in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" they woke up too late and everybody was running around and yelling and yanking on their clothes? It was like that.' Here's an idea: why don't you come up with your own original way to describe things in your own book instead of copping unfunny descriptions of funny moments in other peoples' films? That's why we're reading a book we haven't read yet instead of watching a film we've seen. There's a difference between making a creative reference and lifting something wholesale from another source. Plus what about the people who haven't seen the movie? Do they have to go rent it just to get the gist of things? Poor planning.
This book just made me reread Bridget Jones again. I really hope it won't make it to the movie phase.
Rating:
Summary: perfect girly afternoon reading
Review: I love this book. I picked it up on a hunch on day and couldn't put it down. It was witty as well as touching (i was in tears at the end which is very odd for me). It was written suprisingly well for a first time author, and I would recomend it to any women who knows about the thrills of temptation. I thought Parks did a fantastic job of making not only Connie, the books lead character, inthralling but also putting a little dimention on her freinds as well. Since one of my biggest problems with modern writters is there lack of character development, this book was a breath of freash air. I highly recomend this book.
Rating:
Summary: An intelligent and honest look at marriage and infidelity
Review: Is there such a thing as Happily Ever After? That's what Connie Green -- the spunky heroine in Playing Away -- wonders. More importantly, why would a confident and successful career woman with a seemingly perfect husband want to have a sleazy affair with a I-can-get-any-woman-I-want-whenever-I-want man? These are the things that the precocious heroine is battling with. Connie cannot resist John Harding's enigmatic and tenacious nature. Before she knows it, she has begun a steamy and dangerous affair that could make or destroy her life. Connie is confused. She doesn't know what she wants. So she seeks advise from her friends, all of which are too preoccupied with their own love lives -- or lack thereof. Will Connie come to her senses, or will she throw caution to the wind and jeopardize her marriage? This novel made laugh and cry. There were some scenes in which Connie and John engaged into some pretty racy sex. But there were funny and touching moments as well. I loved Connie's friends -- their get-togethers and witty conversations felt as though I was watching an episode of Sex and the City. However, I frowned at the fact that Connie seemed a little too desperate about John and degraded herself most of the time. It was painful. But the sharp writing and witty characters are the force in this magnificent novel. Playful, sexy, perverse and with a particular brand of sly naivete all its own, Playing Away is a reading investment. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent story about marriage, fidelity, lust, and love.
Review: This book was wonderful, perhaps because it really hits home with any woman who is married and considered an affair. Lust, love, why a married woman in love with a great husband would even consider an affair. Adele's writing is fluid with great commentary on life's funny situations. Connie, her main character, is flawed - which makes the story very real. This is not a fairy tale romance, however it is very enjoyable to watch Connie's journey through a comfortable marriage, to a lustful affair, to the reality of what marriage really is and how good it really can be. I don't think every reader will understand or appreciate the depth of this story, but it's a wonderful, well-written book that is entertaining, funny, and touching.
Rating:
Summary: Real and edgy (or "Reasons to NOT Have an Affair")
Review: What happens when a good girl has an affair? Read this book and your questions will be answered. Playing Away is a wonderful novel about a fairy-tale marriage and what happens after. Highly recommended to British Literature fans or for those who want to read about the married side of Bridget Jones. Connie Green Baker has it all: a loving husband, fabulous friends, nice home, great life. So why the affair? It baffles Connie the most -- she loves her husband and is not unhappy in her marriage. But once she meets sexy, uninhibited John Harding at a work conference, something stirs inside her (literally!). Connie suddenly has a one-track mind on the John Harding Train and, try as she might, she can't (or doesn't want to) get off. As an adulteress, Connie again experiences the crazy passionate drama that was a part of her former life, the life she led before she got married. Which is not necessarily a good thing.... And then there are her friends: Sam, Daisy, Lucy and Rose -- each unique in personalities who offer advice and support for dear Connie, who has found herself in quite a predicament. Readers will laugh and smile in recognition, but will also shake their heads in dismay. The story follows Connie through the many stages of her comfortable and seemingly boring marriage and her disappointment of the lustful, bodice-ripping fairy-tale she imagined it to be. Playing Away is more than just a testimony to the awesome dynamics of a marriage -- it's a gritty portrayal of the toll it takes on a restless mind and the mistakes that can be made to fix it.
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