After the Game

About After the Game

After the Game is the third novel in Abbi Glines' Field Party series, published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster. The book is the most challenged in the series and the one that deals most directly with the subject matter that has made the Field Party books controversial in school settings. The novel centers on Riley Young, who, years earlier, accused the oldest son of one of Lawton's most prominent families — Rhett Lawton — of rape. The town did not believe her. She was pressured out of Lawton, and she left — pregnant.

When Riley returns to Lawton with her daughter, she has no illusions about the welcome she'll receive. The community that drove her away has not fundamentally changed. Rhett's family still carries influence. The social consequences of the original accusation are still in effect. The novel follows Riley's navigation of this environment — the hostility, the whisper networks, the loyalty structures of a small Southern town — while raising the question of what accountability looks like when an entire community has decided to look the other way.

Brady Higgens, the novel's male lead, is Rhett's best friend — which complicates the romance from the beginning. Brady is one of the people who, by staying silent and staying loyal to Rhett, participated in the community's erasure of Riley's experience. His growing belief in Riley, and what it costs him to act on it, forms the novel's central moral question.

Content and Themes

After the Game addresses sexual assault, teen pregnancy, and the functioning of community silence around powerful families more directly than any other volume in the Field Party series. Glines does not minimize what happened to Riley or what it cost her, and the novel's resolution requires Brady to reckon with his own complicity in a way that most YA romance novels do not demand of their leads.

Why It Has Been Challenged

After the Game has been challenged in school libraries more often than any other Glines title — six documented instances — primarily for its sexual content, its direct treatment of rape and its aftermath, and its depiction of teen pregnancy. Some challenges have additionally cited the novel's frank portrayal of community institutions failing a young woman who told the truth. The American Library Association has noted the Field Party series among frequently challenged YA series in recent years.