The Playground Mafia by Sarah Tucker

Blurb

Meet Caroline Gray: divorcee and newly-single mother. Firmly closing the door on her acrimonious divorce, Caroline and son Ben have moved to trendy Frencham where they join Caroline's long-time best friends, Heather and Eva. Settling into their new life is easy, but nothing has prepared Caroline for the demands of motherhood at The Sycamore, the school the trio's beloved offspring attend. Forget classroom bullies, forget trips to the head's office, this is full-scale adult playground politics. This is battle with the mothers who won't take no for an answer -- the Playground Mafia. Amidst the four-wheel drives, Ben's complicated afterschool play-date schedule and her friends' perilous extra-marital affairs, Caroline tries to keep a low and very single profile. But it's not long before she too finds herself under the mafia's scandal-radar, and her life takes an unexpected turn ...

Review

Ooh, this book brought back so many memories of when my own child was little, and it was worth reading it for that alone!

Funny throughout, the humour is subtle and well done. Ms Tucker got many of the playground scenarios -and I'm talking about the mums here - spot on. The snide comments regarding parenting skills or lack of them, the competition over mundane things, the my-child-is-better-than-yours implications are all too familiar. The story might be set in a more affluent area and with wealthier characters than I enjoyed, but the sentiments are the same!

Such an enjoyable story, and little Ben was the star, I felt.

About the Author

Sarah Tucker is an award winning journalist, broadcaster and author, having written seven novels to date and four travel books HAVE BABY WILL TRAVEL, HAVE TODDLER WILL TRAVEL, HAVE TEENAGER WILL TRAVEL and THE A TO ZEN OF TRAVEL (or HAVE MIDLIFE CRISIS WILL TRAVEL!). She now co presents the Share Radio Travel Guide each week on Thursdays at 6.30pm, and is the travel editor of Radio Gorgeous, as well as travel editor of the Sheengate titles in SW London and Surrey. Hear Sarah on www.shareradio.co.uk Sarah devised and presented the award winning Jazz Fm Travel Guide, featuring the best of blues and jazz from around the world, and interviewing celebrities about their worst and most unusual travel experiences. She was also a travel correspondent for Classic Fm and Sky News, and presented reports for the BBC Holiday Programme. While three months pregnant she retraced the footsteps of the goldrush stampeders from Skagway Alaska to Dawson City in the Yukon, for the Discovery Channel. She's anchored the ITV series I WANT THAT HOUSE REVISITED, interviewing buyers of property around the world. Sarah freelances for most of the nationals and womens' consumer titles, including National Geographic Traveller. She's a qualified yoga instructor, teaching in schools in SW London and Surrey, and has published THE A TO ZEN OF YOGA, focusing on how yoga deals with emotional issues such as anger management, loneliness, heartbreak, greed and vanity. Basically a lot of the issues the characters in her novels face on a daily basis, and most recently produced a beautiful series of books for children engaging children in the benefits of yoga - THE BOOK OF BRILLIANT BALANCES, THE BOOK OF SUPER STRETCHES, and THE BOOK OF TERRIFIC TWISTS. She has her own youtube channel sponsored by netmums on playground politics and her bestseller THE PLAYGROUND MAFIA, and all the issues around it. https://youtu.be/3FnW0pz1XeA More details about Sarah including her regular blog can be found on www.sarahtucker.info (Ipad and iphone compatible) and www.atozenoftravel.com.