ARC Review: Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines

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…

Brooke's Review:

I want to thank Simon Pulse for providing me with a copy of this book to read and give a review. Receiving this book for free has in no way altered my opinion or review.

I'm a big fan of Friday Night Lights. And given the fact that this book was toted as being something people who like that series will love, you can imagine I jumped at my chance to get a copy. I have only ever read one other Abbi Glines book and I didn't really find that it was for me. But YA, about football, and romance, I'm all for it!

Maggie is an interesting character. She chooses not to talk. So at first it's truly hard to get a read on her. Despite the fact that you get her narrative, I just could not connect. I really wanted to like her, but I just found she was rather flat. I also found her to be too much of a doormat for me. Sure, she has her issues, but she just allowed West to walk all over her, as well as other characters. She had no strength at all for me and I found her to be an unreliable role model.

West is the cocky jock you figure he would be. Always on top, always with everyone loving him, always hiding his pain. Sure, he has issues, and for some reason he feels only Maggie can help him cope with them. Honestly, I found him to be just a jerk. I didn't find one thing remotely enticing about him. It didn't matter to me that he was this big handsome football jock that everyone was supposed to love, his issues were much bigger than his personality and I didn't like it one bit.

I just didn't get this relationship. They start as friends and then within a month they are madly in love. It felt rushed to me. And I found this book to really just be a toned down NA (all the sex parts left out so it can be labeled as YA). Honestly, for a YA book I think it gives a terrible portrayal of boys who are only worried about partying, alcohol and having sex, and girls who are pretty much worried about the same things. That's not to say that perhaps it does take place in HS these days (what do I know, I graduated a long time ago), but I wouldn't want my teen to read this and think it's ok.

I really wanted to like this one. I had such high hopes, even standing in line at BEA to get myself a copy (and I started reading it while on another line for a signing). But it just wasn't meant to be for me. I found it too predictable which in turn made it a bit boring for me.

I'm sure that fans of Glines will love this just as much as her other books. From what I've read of them they seem to have similar themes and such.

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.