Until Friday Night | Abbi Glines | Young Adult | Pub Date: August 25, 2015
This is the first YA book from popular New Adult author Abbi Glines, and it falls short completely. I’ve personally read some of her New Adult works, and this one wasn’t all that different from those. That being said, I think that it still makes sense for her to officially cross over to the Young Adult world. Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of this for several reasons.
Until Friday Night is about a girl named Maggie who has just moved in with her aunt, uncle, and cousin in Lawton, Alabama, in escape from her horrible trauma. Two years ago, she saw her father kill her mother, and she hasn’t spoken since she told the police what happened. West is the big man on campus silently dealing with his father’s cancer, and everything changes when Maggie breaks her silence and speaks to him. After that, a surprising relationship between two very different people who have been through a great deal emerges.
The big issue I had was with the main character, West. Basically, West is a popular football player who is secretly dealing with his father being sick, so he needs an outlet for his frustrations. Therefore, he uses girls, and I wasn’t a fan of how this was written. Mostly because even when he meets our heroine, he picks up a “friends with benefits” type relationship. To me, this is far from realistic. I get that his dad is sick, but I still don’t believe that’s an excuse to treat girls as if they are toys that he can play with and then just throw away whenever he gets bored. Maybe some readers can overlook this particular behavior, but I was unable to do so. West didn’t redeem himself at all with me, and it’s hard for me to truly love a book if the male love interest isn’t charming at all.
I liked Maggie and I did sympathize with her, but I felt like she almost wasn’t feisty enough. She automatically falls for serial user West, kissing him hours after meeting him, even when he says horrible things to her. I get that she’s in a vulnerable place, but she only comes out of her shell around him, and that didn’t make any sense to me.
There were also prominent problems I had even with Maggie. I didn’t like how she was portrayed as this innocent pure thing who could do no wrong. All of the boys, I mean literally all of them, wanted her. How unrealistic is this? I strongly dislike it when YA books follow this trope; it’s off-putting, to say the least. ALL of the male characters were misogynistic. They honestly referred to all of the girls at school as “sluts” and “whores” except for one character. Which character? Yup, you guessed it, perfect Maggie.
I know I’m being harsh on this book, but I think all of these are important slips that I simply couldn’t ignore. One thing that I did like was Maggie’s relationship with Brady and his family. Some of the supporting characters stood out, and I do think it will be interesting to see their stories in the upcoming books for this new series. However, I no longer have high expectations for these books. I do believe that fans of Abbi Glines will likely enjoy this book, especially if they are used to her writing style.
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Rating: 2/10
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