Book Review: Until Friday Night (Field Party #1) by Abbi Glines

Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines
Rating: /5

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Finding out one of my favorite romance authors releasing a new series made me so, so excited. I’ve read all twenty-one books of her from both Sea Breeze and Rosemary Beach series and fell in love with most of them. So I didn’t even hesitate to pick this starter book of the Field Party series, expecting a beautiful story to enjoy.

Had read a lot from Abbi Glines, I always know what to expect from her books: main characters with baggage, insecure heroine, possessive boyfriend, and a bunch of hot guys on a tight circle of friendship. You can pretty much find all of these things on her every book―or at least on both series that I’ve read and I find out that that might be what got me into her books on the first place. How she creates two flawed characters to meet and fall in love with each other, how she proves the old ‘love-will-conquer-all’ saying through the romances, how such insecure and weak heroine could eventually turn into a kick-ass girl making their alpha-male boyfriends become more laid-back, and how heartwarming the friendship the characters have; all of these are the reasons I always come back for her books no matter how cliché the romance. You know, the romance in which two people with issues meet then fall in love, throw in some twists, a little push-and-pull scenes also, and voila!... love is in the air as they make up. I’m not being sarcastic here because in fact, I like that. Hell, I love that because Abbi seems to always know what topic of issues to combine with that typical romance. For example, Sea Breeze series brings up various topics making me feels a different shade of feelings all over again every time I open each book.

But I felt different with Until Friday Night.
Or at least, I wanted to feel different with this book.

Until Friday Night picked up a theme of football as part of Field Party series. Our heroine is a 17-years old girl (with baggage) named Maggie. Lost both parents in a tragic accident, Maggie decided to shut herself from the world by staying quiet. Living that way for two years, Maggie felt it works just fine for her. Nobody could demand her for telling what had happened that one terrible night. Though Maggie had to fend for herself with the constant nightmares coming to her every night, staying silent did limit some of the trigger of her panic attack. Everything would be just fine or so she thought. Until a boy―a hot gorgeous boy with issue on his own―came around and brought down the only defense she got against the scary world. West was one of the football players from Lawton High. The popular and cocky boy seemed like having an amazing life when he actually hid something behind the happy façade as he counted down the remaining days of his dad in the world. To his surprise, what started as one little mistake became so much more as he depended more and more of the silent girl to keep him strong.

The first few chapters got me hooked instantly. It didn’t surprise me since all of her books that I’ve read did exactly that to me every single time. I’d prepared myself to smile, laugh, cry, and be mad along with the characters as I always did. I even did a bit of everything at first, I did smile; a bit teary-eyed; and I was only on chapter five. What I didn’t expect was for me to feel this ‘uhh’ feeling repeatedly throughout the story. I kept waiting for some damn-let-me-marry-this-book scenes for nothing. My excitement died somewhere past 30% mark when things got more and more… cliché.

Maggie’s insecurity was something that I focused on intensely. I loved it when Abbi slowly turned her into this stronger girl though Maggie’s way to help West was a little dramatic and nonsensical to my opinion. West, in the other side, was an eye-candy in the beginning that slowly became such an… (sorry) eye-sore. His possessiveness was just a big no. I mean, if his character is put to Abbi’s NA characters like Rush or Cage (lol, these buddies are my fave, anyway) then it would be a total turn-on. But this is a 17 years old high-school boy we’re talking about. Isn’t it a little too early for him to go alpha-male on his classmate? And not to forget, the way he treats girls other than Maggie. Oh boy, I prefer my YA book-boyfriend to be a little ‘tame’, I guess…

Until Friday Night became more like Abbi Glines’ previous books each page. The romance plot and the delineation of the characters, all of that was just too similar in this book. I said before that I don’t mind with this similarity before. I do, really I do. But Field Party is a new series and a YA. I wanted a fresh idea of story, a fresh characters, a fresh everything. I read so many YA these past several months and most of them brought up a fresh topic or just old topics mixed together in a fresh serving. Until Friday Night is a good read but I think it’s not Abbi’s best one from this series.

Even though this book swerved a little from my expectation, I still enjoyed the writing style that was Abbi Glines’s. Until Friday Night might not be my favorite but I like to believe that the next book on the series would be much better. Gunner’s story is next, I guess? Well, I’d like to read a more gripping story of his then.

Love, read, and review,

Cynthia D.