Making a Play - Review

Making a Play (The Field Party, # 5)

By: Abbi Glines

Publication: August 20th 2019 by Simon Pulse

320 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Source: Borrowed from the e-Library

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Goodreads description--The fifth 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.

Ryker Lee is finally enjoying his senior year—he has great friends, hangs out with hot girls, and is on track to get a football scholarship that will set him up for college. Despite this, a small part of him wonders if there’s more to life than parties and meaningless hookups—and if football even means as much to him as it does to his fellow teammates. And when he meets the new girl at school, his world totally changes…

Aurora McClay is new to Lawton. She’s grateful that her twin brother, Hunter, is star of the football team and can help her adjust to her new school, but she’s not grateful at how overprotective he is over every person she meets. Just because she is deaf does not mean people have to treat her differently. When she meets Ryker Lee, the two of them spark an instant and intense chemistry, one that proves to be controversial not only because of Ryker’s reputation as a player, but also because of Aurora and Hunter’s father’s bigoted views about who Aurora can and can’t date.

Aurora and Ryker know in their hearts that they are meant for each other. But can their relationship endure the turmoil of rumors and prejudice?

I say this pretty regularly, but Abbi Glines is an author that can easily pull me into her characters and story, but I often have issues with her books that keep them from being 4 and 5-Star reads for me. Each book varies when it comes to the things that bother me, yet I consider her to be a pretty consistent author. Because Losing the Field was tame with the physical descriptions, I kind of expected Making a Play to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. I was happy to find that it was not. I will say that language was fairly common and on the more frequent scale for my preferences, but I can mostly skim over that.

love the representation of deaf culture in Making a Play. My friend's 4-year-old daughter was born deaf and I have witnessed a lot through her journey. I can't speak to the accuracy of the representation entirely, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

Ryker and Aurora have an instalove kind of story. Ryker is the typical bad boy that Abbi Glines is famous for writing. And even though we know he's been affected by his relationship with Tallulah, his cousin Nash's girlfriend, due to some harsh and mean things he's said about her in the past that he's already had to face some uncomfortable facts about himself and change, but he goes from player to committed in literally the span of an eye lock. To make the instalove comment even more true, the majority of the book spans a week. Aurora is sweet and innocent and never has to see Ryker at his worst because he basically changes upon meeting her.

The other big conflict for these two characters is the racial differences. Ryker is black and Aurora is white. And Aurora's father is labeled as a racist throughout the book because he wouldn't be happy knowing that his daughter is dating a black guy. Now I just don't know how I feel about all of this. Certainly, racism still exists. Stereotypically racism exists in the South. Even more stereotypically, racism exists in Alabama. And this is true. To an extent. I will say though that I have watched interracial relationships grow in increasing numbers from when I was in elementary school to today when my nieces and nephews are in high school and college. And the stigma just isn't the same as it used to be. Are there some who still look down on interracial relationships? Of course. But I have some mixed feelings upon whether disapproval of interracial relationships equals racism. One thing is for sure, I don't have all of the answers.

I enjoyed Ryker and Aurora's relationship and story. It was a little "insta" for me, but I go into Abbi Glines's books expecting fun, light and fast. I don't expect every piece to be 100% realistic. So I don't hold it all under a microscope like I might for something else. Making a Play gets 3.5 Stars. Have you read Making a Play? What did you think? Let me know!