Until Friday Night

Abbi Glines’s Until Friday Night is a young adult romance novel that follows the relationship between the two protagonists, Maggie Carlton and West Ashby. Maggie’s and West’s alternating first-person narratives reveal their complex feelings for each other and their struggles to navigate falling in love. Their evolving dynamic is the basis for the novel’s themes of Coping with Grief and Trauma, The Development of Teenage Romantic Relationships, and The Role of Communication in Healing. This guide refers to the 2015 Simon Pulse paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of grief and trauma, controlling behavior, domestic violence that results in death, mental illness, and death by suicide. The source text also includes ableist and offensive language to refer to non-verbal people, which this guide replicates in direct quotes only.

Plot Summary

Maggie Carlton moves to Lawton, Alabama, to live with her aunt Coralee, uncle Boone, and cousin Brady Higgens two years after she watched her father kill her mother. Maggie hasn’t spoken since the tragedy, and fears opening up to her family about what happened to her. She tries to express her gratitude by hugging her aunt and writing apologetic notes to her cousin.