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Review

4 stars

I love Abbi Glines, and this book feels like Abbi Glines – if you’ve read her books before then you’ll know what I mean, if you haven’t, then what are you waiting for? Featuring a partly broken but instantly loveable hero and heroine, a great bunch of supporting characters, a really well done dramatic element, and a gorgeously sweet (and slightly angsty) romance, all set in the highly hormonal world that is senior high school and Friday night football. It’s YA, but it’s mature YA, and I was hooked from start to finish.

Maggie has just moved to the town of Lawton, Alabama, to live with her Aunt, Uncle and cousin. She has been through hell, having witnessed her mother’s abuse and eventual death at the hands of her father. In order to deal with the trauma, she refuses to talk, preferring to keep to herself so that she doesn’t ever have to answer questions she doesn’t want to deal with.

West Ashby is a confident, popular football player and the golden boy of his high school. He puts on a cocky, couldn’t-care-less attitude, but his reality couldn’t be further from that. His father is dying – slowly and painfully, and it is taking everything that West has just to make it through each day.

On the surface, Maggie and West couldn’t be more different – the confident, manwhoring football star, and the shy, quiet new girl, but they share a grief which draws them together. Maggie sees the pain behind West’s façade and she feels a connection to him, she wants to be there for him, and she reaches out.

Nothing I could do would ease this pain. Nothing anyone could do would make it better. So I reached over with my hand and covered his, it was the only thing I knew to do.

West feels comfortable with Maggie, she understands him in a way that nobody else does and as they start to open up to each other, he sees her as a lifeline and clings to her with an intensity that startles everybody around him.

Maggie made me feel stronger. She reminded me that I wasn’t alone in this world. That others had gone through this too. 

I loved the connection between these two characters as Maggie supports West through the hardest time of his life, and the lines of their friendship soon start to blur as deeper feelings start to develop. I loved the progression of their relationship as each moment draws them closer and closer to each other, it was gorgeous to watch.

“West.”
Maggie whispered my name as her hands gripped my arms tightly. This was going to be my undoing. This girl. She was going to claim me. 

I could feel everything right alongside Maggie and West as they fell for each other, and the added emotional drama increases the intensity and the all-consuming nature of everything between them. But with both of them struggling through own torment, is what they are feeling really real, or is it just some sort of unhealthy attachment formed under difficult circumstances?

This wasn’t what I’d intended to happen in the beginning. I had imagined finding a way for me to heal too while I helped him. It was a way for me to find peace. But we had become something more. Something I never imagined.
Falling in love with West Ashby had not been part of my plan.

She had become my lifeline. I wanted to be hers. I wanted her to feel this way about me, too.

This is quite an emotional book – the subject matter is heavy, and Glines holds nothing back as her characters go through their dark times. The drama of all that Maggie and West go through has equal weight to the romance throughout the story, and the character growth is really well done as they face up to their grief and start to move forward.

West’s group of friends are a great bunch, and it’s clear that they are being set up as the main characters of the rest of the series. Maggie’s cousin Brady is West’s best friend, and I loved how protective he was of her, and I loved the way she was accepted into the group as the boys naturally banded around her to watch her back. There are already a couple of storylines set up and I’m really excited for future books.

I really enjoyed this one – 4 stars.

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The Field Party Series