Book: Until Friday Night (Field Party #1)
Author: Abbi Glines
Pages: 328 (Paperback)
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: August 25th, 2015
Read: 19/09/2016
Official Synopsis:
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…
My Review (contains spoilers):
I’ve read this book right before The Problem with Forever. Both main characters are girls who stopped speaking after a trauma, so I couldn’t help comparing the two.
What I liked was the writing style, it fit the whole highschool atmosphere very well and I loved that there was some slang in there which made everything even more authentic. The plot was good too, but… there was so much drama? Especially with all the girls. I couldn’t really find any real girl friendships, all the girls were competing with each other, mostly for attention and boys. Like, every girl in this highschool was somewhat stupid and only the MC was good and any different. To be clear, she definitely is different due to what she had to endure, but that doesn’t make other girls dislike every female person on this planet. The boy friendships were great, though. They were described very realistically and way deeper than any girl character even was.
I can totally understand that seeing her father shoot her mother is traumatic and the main character stops talking because she is too afraid of hearing her own voice. What I can’t understand though is, that only this one boy can help her. Yes, he feels pain too and they connect through it but this was just this “popular boy saves unpopular girl and then she saves him and they save each other and fall in love” and I got very annoyed at some points.
In the end there were a lot of open questions but I’m not sure I want to read the second book to find out if they will be answered or not.
It was an enjoyable read, but to me, it wasn’t much more.
Rating:
★★★/5
