Book: Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines

Published August 2015 by Simon Pulse|336 pages

Where I Got It: I borrowed the hardcover from the library

Series: The Field Party #1

Genre: YA Contemporary

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…

I picked this one up on a whim one day, and I’m glad I did, because I end up really liking it!  And even though I really liked it, there are definitely some issues I have with the book.

Like, I felt like I needed more of Maggie’s backstory.  She mentions mentions staying before moving to Alabama, but we’re never told what their relationship to her was, or why she was staying with them.  Even though we’re told the basics of why she moved to Alabama and why she doesn’t talk, I still felt like something was missing from her story.

Honestly, though, what is with the trope of not talking after witnessing/going through through something very traumatic?  People deal with stuff in a lot of different ways, and clearly, this was her way of dealing with it, but it really bugged me for some reason.  It also sort of bugged me that she only talked to one person, but at the same time, I think they needed each other.  Maggie needed to talk to someone, and West needed to talk to someone who would just listen.

And West dealing with a sick parent, and no one picking up on anything?  I don’t blame him, and yet…how did his closest friends not pick up on something being wrong?  Still, I liked that Maggie saw something that no one else did, and I think having each other helped them get through everything that had happened and was happening in their lives.  She seemed to get him in a way no one else did.

I’ve only read one other Abbi Glines book, and that was a few years ago, so I was surprised by how much it leaned towards YA.  It’s not a bad thing, but I assumed it would be more towards the NA side of things, even though the characters are in high school.  And just based off of the title and cover, I expected football and Friday nights to be more of a thing, and it really wasn’t a big thing like I thought it would be.

I really liked Maggie and West as friends, and part of me wishes they had remained friends, because I felt like there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between them.  I didn’t feel the romance, even though I really wanted to.

Still, it’s a really cute story, and I couldn’t help but want everything to be okay for both of them.

4 stars.  I really liked it, and even though I didn’t feel the romance between Maggie and West, I really liked how supportive they were of each other.