Playing Away Books in Order

Adele Parks’s Playing Away world follows a tight group of London friends as they grow from carefree single women into wives and mothers, and discover that happily ever after is a lot messier than they expected. The tone is chatty and funny but the choices are serious.

In Playing Away we meet Connie, newly married to steady, affectionate Luke and convinced she has everything sorted. Then a work trip introduces her to John Harding, a sophisticated flirt who makes her feel like the wild, reckless version of herself she thought she had left behind. That temptation pulls her into an affair that unpicks not only her marriage but the way she sees herself.

Connie’s crisis doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Around her, friends juggle their own ideas of love and success: Lucy, who prefers other women’s husbands; Rose, exhausted from constant childcare and trying to keep her home together; Daisy, swept up in new romance; and Sam, who seems to have life under control but quietly wants more. The books lean into late-night conversations, bad decisions and uncomfortable honesty between women who both support and judge one another.

Years later, Young Wives’ Tales returns to the same characters to explore what happens after the dramatic choices of youth.

By this point Lucy is married to Peter, the husband she once stole from her friend Rose, and is discovering that being the wife is far less glamorous than being the mistress. Rose is rebuilding as a single parent determined to be the ideal mum while still carrying the hurt of betrayal. Connie, apparently settled and content with Luke and their two children, is rocked when John Harding appears again at the school gates and old feelings flare.

The two novels together trace how one impulsive affair ripples across years of ordinary life. Parks is less interested in neat moral judgments than in how her characters justify themselves, cling to fantasies and slowly learn where their values truly lie. Readers can expect sharp dialogue, frank talk about sex and friendship, and a very human look at marriage from several clashing points of view.