Until Friday Night (The Field Party #1) by Abbi Glines

 

 

Blurb:

To everyone who knows him, West Ashby has always been that guy: the cocky, popular, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good football god who led Lawton High to the state championships. But while West may be Big Man on Campus on the outside, on the inside he’s battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer.

Two years ago, Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened, she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton, Alabama, couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet, keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away.

As West’s pain becomes too much to handle, he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father—so in the dark shadows of a post-game party, he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else.

West expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief, or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply, to reveal a pain even deeper than his own—or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go…

 

 

Purchase Links:

 

Amazon Paperback: http://amzn.to/1LRAnc0

Amazon US: http://bit.ly/1hMDU0T

Amazon AUS: http://bit.ly/1fF45Fs

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1JYnNbF

iBooks: http://itun.es/au/ZNET5.I

 

Kristine's Review:

Reviewed: September 2015.

 

I'm going to start by being entirely honest, I was a little nervous going into the Until Friday Night, you see I'm an Abbi Glines fan, While It Lasts and Sometimes It Lasts are two of my favourite books, and I can't not mention that I suffered from "Rush Crush"...and here comes the but, and it's a big one, recently I've been finding the books in the Rosemary Beach series to be formulaic and repetitive, rich badboy man whore...check...young and innocent virgin...check...virgin shoes man whore there's more to life than easy women and expensive toys...check... in saying that I made my way through Rush, Woods and Grant's stories, but I have been struggling to feel invested since.

 

Until Friday Night had the pre release hype that I've come to accept from an Abbi release, I hoped for something fresh and new, something that felt different from her previous works, West is a God in his high school, part of the successful football team, guys want to be him, girls want to be with him, he's popular, well liked, life is good...only it isn't...his father is dying of cancer and West is slowly drowning under the crushing waves of grief not only for the man he is going to lose, but for the future he had planned with his family cheering him on. West has always maintained a level of privacy surrounding his feelings, living a life in the public eye of high school jock, surrounded by many but close with few is lonelier than most people would expect. West's entire life is crumbling around his shoulders and he has no where he can turn until he meets Maggie.

 

Maggie has an innocence to her, and yet is more world weary than anyone deserves to be, within moments of seeing West for the first time she recognises something in him, she senses a soul deep connection that only someone who understands her pain could fee. Maggie and West developing a bond is something that could save them both from the torment of the pain and grief they're living but  even the strongest connections forged during times of struggle may not last, Maggie has lived and seen things that would haunt even the strongest of men, she's found a way to cope, to survive, and she gives West hope that beyond the anger, the sadness and grief is life.

 

I'm not going to pretend there aren't similarities to other Glines' books here, but where I worried that Until Friday Night would feel stayed and predictable there was enough to spark my interest from the first chapter, there was a fresh vibe to this new series, West and Maggie could have been clichéd but instead I found them endearing, West may be the alpha of this story, but for me Maggie was very much the hero, Until Friday Night was equal parts sweet and angsty, Glines tackled some heavy subjects with finesse, I was invested in not only the characters but in the world the author created, I'm excited to see what's next for the Field Party series.

 

 

 



About Abbi Glines: 

 

Abbi Glines is a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Rosemary Beach, Sea Breeze, Vincent Boys, and Existence series. She has a new YA series coming out in the fall of 2015 titled The Field Party Series . She never cooks unless baking during the Christmas holiday counts. She believes in ghosts and has a habit of asking people if their house is haunted before she goes in it. She drinks afternoon tea because she wants to be British but alas she was born in Alabama. When asked how many books she has written she has to stop and count on her fingers. When she’s not locked away writing, she is reading, shopping (major shoe and purse addiction), sneaking off to the movies alone, and listening to the drama in her teenagers lives while making mental notes on the good stuff to use later. Don’t judge.

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