Adele Parks’ latest book, Men I’ve Loved Before, is set in and around Chiswick and it is therefore fitting that the best-selling author will be making an appearance at next weekend’s Chiswick Book Festival to discuss it.

Parks, 41, moved with her family to Guildford two years ago after living in Chiswick for the best part of a decade and she says her former neighbourhood was the perfect place to use as the backdrop for her novel.

“As a place Chiswick is super picturesque and there is a lot going on there so you can have scenes in all the bars and restaurants,” she explains.

“I’d go to them and sit and write – it was a great excuse for research. The book is about a couple who fall madly in love and decide they never want children. After five years of marriage the guy changes his mind while his wife doesn’t. I thought to myself that Chiswick would be a terrible place to be if you were in that situation because it is full of families.”

The book’s plot occupies familiar territory for Parks who is usually labelled a chick lit author. Indeed, the Chiswick Book Festival event has been called Chick Lit in Chiswick and while Parks, perhaps understandably, finds the tag a frustrating one, she also concedes that it does carry some benefits.

She says: “When I started writing it never occured to me that what I was doing would be put in a category and I have done research into what exactly chick lit is.

“One professor at De Monfort University has looked at how women’s literature has been denigrated over the years by being given a title such as bonk buster or chick lit.

“It can be irritating because it means people might not consider the quality of the writing but on the other hand my big passion is getting people reading and a fun title for a genre can get an awful lot of people reading who might otherwise be intimidated by novels.

“Those people have been brought into reading in their droves by this genre, so I can’t really knock it too much.”

Parks wrote her first novel, Playing Away in 1999 and the former management consultant has worked like a demon to produce 10 novels since, selling more than 1.5m copies in the process – whether the books are chick lit or not, they have clearly struck a chord with the public and with a new one already handed into her publisher, Parks’ success and workrate shows little sign of abating.

Chick Lit in Chiswick with Adele Parks, St Michael and All Angels Church, September 19, 2pm, admission by Sunday Day Pass (£5), chiswickbookfestival.org