Under the Lights by Abbi Glines

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Title: Under the Lights
Author: Abbi Glines
Series: The Field Party #2
Published by: Simon Pulse
Release Date: August 23rd 2016
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 337
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

In the follow-up to Abbi Glines’s #1 New York Times bestseller Until Friday Night—three teens from a small southern town are stuck in a dramatic love triangle.

Willa can’t erase the bad decisions of her past that led her down the path she’s on now. But she can fight for forgiveness from her family. And she can protect herself by refusing to let anyone else get close to her.

High school quarterback and town golden boy Brady used to be the best of friends with Willa—she even had a crush on him when they were kids. But that’s all changed now: her life choices have made her a different person from the girl he used to know.

Gunner used to be friends with Willa and Brady, too. He too is larger than life and a high school football star—not to mention that his family basically owns the town of Lawton. He loves his life, and doesn’t care about anyone except himself. But Willa is the exception—and he understands the girl she’s become in a way no one else can.

As secrets come to light and hearts are broken, these former childhood friends must face the truth about growing up and falling in love…even if it means losing each other forever.

My Review:

3 stars — Well shoot.  I can honestly say that I didn’t have as much success with this book.  While there were things that I enjoyed, there were just too many other things that bugged me for it to be an enjoyable overall read.  I’ll try not to get too ranty, but I do want to express the things that weren’t to this reader’s personal liking.  I kind of noticed this in the first book, but it appears that Ms. Glines likes to ride the line for me…maybe for many.  And depending on where that line is for you personally, she might go over it or she might not.  In the first book she definitely rode my line, but I gave her a pass on a few things hoping that they weren’t going to be trends, as well as the fact that there was so much ELSE that I loved about the book…make sense?  Anyways, in this book Ms. Glines fell right over my personal line, on a few issues.

OK, first things first, I don’t think I really paid attention to the blurb, I just got it when it was on sale because it was in the series and I crossed my fingers I was going to like the series.  But if I had paid closer attention to the blurb, I might have been more leery.  I’m not usually a fan of love triangles.  It takes a VERY SPECIAL author to make that OK for me.  Now, honestly?  This wasn’t actually a bad love triangle.  At least in terms of leading people on, potentially cheating, or falling in love with both choices and one getting hurt.  So all the normal things that make a love triangle icky for me actually weren’t there.  But I also didn’t see the point.  I felt like the story would have actually been STRONGER without it taking up so much space in the narrative.  I already knew which boy she would end up with, b/c I had seen who book 3 was going to be about.  And so having a good number of chapters from (spoilers?) Brady’s POV actually just made me dislike Brady…which is a bummer.  He was a dick to Ivy, hearing him call himself a good guy while he’s being an asshole did not endear himself to me.  And I wasn’t impressed with his feelings for Willa.  I will admit, that he at least had a mini growth spurt at the end of the book in how he supported Gunner, but now I’m not sure how he’s going to redeem himself in general.  Course, I’m still curious.

As for the two characters that *should* have had most of the focus, let’s start with Gunner.  He had a pretty shit situation, but the more I learned, the more over the top the whole thing became, and the more detached I became from him.  There were many opportunities for me to feel for him and what he was going through, and I just…didn’t really.  Or least not enough.  I didn’t see as much growth as I would have liked from him…I didn’t see his caring, I didn’t see these redeeming qualities that Willa and Nonna saw.  He was a terrible friend really, he treated women horribly, and he had zero coping mechanisms.  I get that how he grew up shaped him, but I needed to see something more to fall in love with him.  And I just didn’t.  I didn’t hate him, but I didn’t feel for him nearly as much as I think I was supposed to.  I will admit that he made me laugh sometimes though.

Then there’s Willa.  I felt glimmers of attachment to her too, but then they kind of went nowhere as well.  Maybe because the story was split between 3 characters, I didn’t get as much time in her head?  I did feel for what her mother did to her, and I did feel for the tragedy she went through, but I had a major personal beef with that whole storyline that I think it prevented me from going all in with Willa as well.  And really, there just wasn’t much about her personality that we got to see.  She had some funny one-liners, but I just don’t really know what she was like.

I know I was supposed to love Nonna, but I just didn’t…I didn’t hate her or anything, but I was disappointed in the way she treated Willa.  I guess it’s human, after what she went through with Willa’s Mom, but having raised Willa for so much of her life, you would think Willa would have earned some trust.  Half the time Nonna understood that Willa was nothing like her mother, and she would say nice things…and the other half…well, I don’t know.  There just felt like opportunities missed there.

And before I get onto spoilery things, the major thing that’s proving to be a problem in this series is that other than the female main characters in BOTH stories, there are NO OTHER good female characters.  I get that it’s a small town, but really?  The way the other girls are described are such stereotypical mean girl/slut-shaming stuff, it’s so ridiculously disappointing…and not to make a judgement call (though I guess I am making one), but it feels like lazy writing.  Also, it really does not paint any of these boys in a great light with the way they treat the girls in their school.  I was not impressed by this in the first book, and we just got to see even more of it here.  NOT A FAN.

OK, the next 2 things are spoilery, so skip the rest if you don’t want to be spoiled (I’ll try to remember to tag in Goodreads).

I have a HUGE personal beef with the way Willa’s tragedy was represented.  I absolutely HATE that people still view pot as worse than alcohol, and the evil of all evils.  I don’t care if you have a problem with it AS LONG as you also have a problem with alcohol.  Because, let’s be real: alcohol is just as bad if not worse than pot.  So when you write a book where all of the teenagers are hanging out drinking every weekend, and it appears that they occasionally drink and drive, and it’s not looked upon in a negative way, and there are NO CONSEQUENCES to this whatsoever…and then you make it so that when Willa and her friends are drinking and smoking pot, and a child dies, and you lightly touch on the drinking, but focus heavily on the smoking as the reason they were inattentive “because pot makes it so you don’t care about anything”…FUCK NO.  NO.  NO NO NO.  I’m not saying that I think teenagers should be smoking pot…or drinking alcohol.  But stop pushing this kind of propaganda, it’s not helping teens make responsible choices.  The tragedy would have happened if all they’d been doing is drinking alcohol.  FOR REALZ.  It’s about irresponsibility.  Sorry, it just pisses me off when people are fine with alcohol abuse, but see pot as the devil drug.  God.  Sorry, rant rant rant.

Also, as a side note?  I wasn’t super happy with the way some of the other little things were addressed in this book either: like the suicide, or believing someone about rape.

The OTHER thing is that ending!!  WTF???  Nothing was resolved!!  That was not a complete book!  What happens next??  Geez, that’s not cool.

OK, so now that I’ve let out all my negative emotions, I’m going to shock the shit out of you guys.  I’m probably going to read the next book.  I want Brady to get the chance to redeem himself (and I hope he does), and I’m super curious about Riley.  But we’ll see which side of my line Ms. Glines stays on…I’ll be bummed if she crosses it again, b/c I’m most looking forward to Nash’s book, but what are you gonna do?  At least they read fast.