SHORT STORIES SPECIAL
ADELE PARKS FLYING HIGH
Introducing our Holiday Reading Special, the One Last Secret author talks about surprising a fan on a plane, which novels she has recently enjoyed and tells how her son inspired her to take in two Ukrainian refugees
When best-selling author Adele Parks was on a flight earlier this summer, she had a real pinch-me moment. On her way to a girls’ weekend in Ibiza, she was seated separately from her friends, one of whom messaged her with a picture of a woman nearby reading one of Adele’s books“She was reading Both of You and, as we left the plane I said to the woman: ‘Are you enjoying that?’” the Surrey-based novelist tells hello!.
“And she said: ‘I’m loving it!’ So I told her I had written it and I signed the book for her. She was going to a wedding and she said she was going to give it to the bride as a gift.”
It’s such moments that sometimes leave Adele unable to believe she is living the life of her dreams. Despite having just released her 22nd book in 22 years – One Last Secret immediately shot straight into the bestsellers list – the 53-year-old often can’t believe she gets to ’ work solely as a novelist. “I wanted to be a writer as a little girl, but I don’t think even when I got my first contract and gave up my job [at an advertising firm] that I could imagine what my life would be like now. I really enjoy writing and I am not sure what I would do with my time if I didn’t write. My job is a real privilege, a total joy. It’s a really lovely life.”