After the Game - Review

After the Game (The Field Party, # 3)

By: Abbi Glines

Expected Publication: August 22nd 2017 by Simon Pulse

320 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Sports

Source: Publisher via Edelweiss (Thank you!!)

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Goodreads description--The third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Field Party series—a southern soap opera with football, cute boys, and pick-up trucks—from USA TODAY bestselling author Abbi Glines.

Two years ago, Riley Young fled from Lawton, Alabama. After accusing the oldest Lawton son, Rhett, of rape, everyone called her a liar and she had no option but to leave. Now she’s back, but she’s not at Lawton High finishing up her senior year. She’s at home raising the little girl that no one believed was Rhett’s.

Rhett is off at college living the life he was afraid he’d lose with Riley’s accusation, so Riley agrees to move back to Lawton so she and her parents could take care of her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. But the town still hasn’t forgotten their hate for her, and she hasn’t forgotten the way they turned on her when she needed them most.

When town golden boy Brady Higgens finds Riley and her daughter, Bryony, stranded on the side of the road in a storm, he pulls over and gives them a ride. Not because he cares about Riley, of course, but because of the kid.

But after the simple car ride, he begins to question everything he thought he knew. Could Brady believe Riley and risk losing everything?

After reading several fantasy books, I needed a genre switch. So when I saw After the Game available on Edelweiss I snatched it up and started reading it pretty much immediately. I knew based on past experience with Abbi Glines in combination with the number of pages for this one that I could read it quickly which was exactly what I needed. And that's exactly what happened.

As the description says, Riley was raped two years ago and no one believed her--except her parents. As a matter of fact, people were even angry with Riley because they decided that she was lying about the town golden boy. Riley's gone through counselling, and she's worked through many of her feelings over the experiences. She's come out on the other side stronger and wiser. But mostly that's because she now has a daughter to take care of. You would think that Riley's experience and rape would dominate the emotional conflict and drama. Yet that wasn't the case. Brady had some things going on with his family that filled that role.

And speaking of, the conflict revolving around Brady's family was something that I predicted from the beginning of the book, but it was also one of the pieces that I connected with the most. Having been touched by this subject in my own life, I felt for him and his family for having to go through all of that.

As I've come to expect from Abbi Glines, the couple had some easy to overcome bumps toward the end of the book. We were so close to the end before these issues really even came up at all so I was semi-hoping that the conflict for the sake of conflict could be avoided. It was not. Thankfully, this wasn't drawn out. I mean it couldn't have been since it was so close to the end of the book.

I probably shouldn't even mention this since I read an uncorrected advanced copy of this book, but there was an entire page where Abbi Glines kept using the wrong character's name. I'm sure this will be fixed before publication, and it didn't keep me from enjoying the book.

The only quotes I highlighted revolve around the issues going on with Brady's family. Because none of that is shared or hinted at in the description, I'm going to keep those quotes to myself.

I do think I should mention that physical scenes were pretty non-existent in this book which I appreciated. But there were several f-bombs if you care to know about that.

After the Game was one of the better Abbi Glines books that I've read. The conflict was real. I appreciated Riley's attitude given the trauma she's experienced in her life. Brady's family drama had my tearing up multiple times. After the Game gets 4 Stars from me. Have you read After the Game? What did you think? Let me know!