Review: Losing the Field by Abbi Glines

Losing the Field by Abbi Glines
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this eARC novel from Edelweiss. This is my honest review.
Release date: August 21, 2018

Tallulah has always been called the fat girl at school. She gets made fun of, laughed at, and is the focus of many jokes among her classmates. Through it all, she just ignores it and does her own thing. But when her crush, Nash - who has always backed her up and been really nice to her, even though his friends are making fun of her - laughs at a joke about her on the last day of school of junior year, it really crushed Tallulah.

That was the day she decided to walk for 5 miles, in the scorching heat, and she did that every day during the summer. She also stopped eating sweets and started eating more healthier. By the time she got back to school senior year, she had lost so much weight that she had to buy a whole new wardrobe to wear clothes that fit her. And all during summer, she was planning her revenge on how she was going to ignore everyone who made fun of her - especially Nash since he was the one that hurt the most.

Nash changed a lot over the summer as well - but in a different way. While playing football for fun, like he does every year, he messed up his leg with permanent damage. He can never play football again and he will have a limp for the rest of his life. Now, instead of being the easy going, fun guy, Nash is mad. He lashes out, he doesn't hangout with anyone, and he doesn't have any ambition for anything.

So when the two see each other again first day of senior year, they are both confused. Nash because he can't figure out why Tallulah is so mad at him - and how much she has changed in just a few months - and Tallulah because Nash is not the guy that she once knew.

And then there is a new teacher - the new football coach - and a new classmate, who is beyond popular on the internet. One will be a little too attentive to Tallulah, and the other will put Nash in a terrible situation.

At the same time, Tallulah and Nash are searching each other out, wanting to hangout with each other. But both still have their deep dark secrets, and once they come out, they may decide that they never knew each other that well in the end.

Okay, I am a huge Abbi Glines fan, but I'm finding that her new books/series that she has been writing is not really for me, which breaks my heart :(

This book was beyond annoying for me. I love that Tallulah decided to lose the weight, but I wish that she did it for herself and not because Nash hurt her, when he definitely didn't mean to. She was doing it all for the wrong reasons, and she should be doing it for herself, so that made me sad. Then she was going to get revenge on Nash for the way he hurt her, but none of that happened because she was still crushing on him and wanted his attention more than making him miserable. I mean, if you are determined to do something, don't back out of it because now you are getting attention from him.

Nash is somewhat of a jerk. I get that "his life is ruined" because he can't play football anymore, and that was his life, but he is still alive and well and he has all the time in the world to figure out what he is meant to do. And then when he sees Tallulah, he is suddenly attracted to her because she is skinny and pretty. It just blows my mind how self-absorbed these kids are. And the kicker is, they even think that themselves! But it doesn't change how they act, even when they know they are acting that way...

There are too many new characters, or characters who seem very important at the beginning and then fade away into nothing. Asa was all over Tallulah, but the second Nash decided that he wanted Tallulah, Asa was just gone, with no explanation until the very end of the book. I mean, really?

And then Tallulah. She is so ... aggravating. She plays the "I'm not naive" card and then she acts naive. She is used to being in the shadows where no one pays attention to her, and now that she is pretty, she is wondering why everyone is suddenly staring at her and wanting to hangout with her. She needs to decide what she wants and sticks with it. And then she gets cornered and "doesn't know what to do because maybe it's not as it seems" which is completely dumb and stupid to me. I would never have taken the crap that she went through. She was very mixed signals and it got on my nerves a lot.

Then a new kid shows up, is all over the place and everyone is freaking out, and then it suddenly comes to a stop with him.

I mean, can we stick with one storyline and not jump every which way? There was way too much in here, with not enough to keep it interesting, and then it suddenly slams shut on that storyline. I wish it was just about the two main characters and how they communicate to one another, because these two jumped to so many terrible conclusions, accused the other one, and then they miraculously forgave each other because they love each other... I'm all for a sappy romance, but this is too much for me.

I hope I am the only reader who feels this way, because I adore Abbi Glines and hope that other readers will find a different outcome of this book when they read it. I'm still going to snatch up as many Abbi Glines books I can afford, but I think I might be done with The Field Party series, if anymore are released in the future, because I just haven't been feeling these characters the entire time I've read this series.

I am very glad I got a chance to read this eARC, and I'm looking forward to see what else Abbi Glines will write!

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