Losing the Field

About Losing the Field

Losing the Field is the fourth novel in Abbi Glines' Field Party series, published in 2019. The book centers on Tallulah Liddell, a character who has existed on the edges of the Lawton social world in the previous volumes — observant, self-effacing, and defined in her own mind primarily by her size. Tallulah has spent her life navigating the particular cruelties of high school as someone who doesn't fit the physical ideal of her peer group, and she has developed strategies for making herself small and invisible to avoid the attention that tends to be unkind.

Nash Lee is the opposite: athlete, popular, desired by everyone in the Lawton social hierarchy in ways he's genuinely exhausted by. The series has built up Nash across the previous volumes as a recognizable type — the golden boy who the reader suspects has more going on than his public face allows — and Losing the Field delivers on that suggestion. Nash's interest in Tallulah is not a misunderstanding or a bet or a social experiment, and the novel works to establish why and how that interest is real before the two characters' worlds are allowed to collide.

The novel's examination of body image, social hierarchies, and the way young women internalize the external assessments of their worth is among the more direct Glines has attempted in the Field Party series. Tallulah's interiority is specific and unglamorized: her self-perception is not simply a problem waiting for the right romance to fix it, and by the end of the novel it has not been entirely fixed.

The Fourth Book in a Series

By its fourth volume, the Field Party series had established a loyal readership comfortable with the world. Losing the Field benefits from accumulated familiarity — the returning characters function as a chorus — while centering characters who had not yet had a full story told from their perspective. Glines' approach of giving each volume to a different couple while maintaining the community gives the series longevity without requiring each book to rebuild its world.

Why It Has Been Challenged

Losing the Field has been challenged in school libraries for its sexual content and mature themes, consistent with challenges to other volumes in the Field Party series. The novel's treatment of body image and romantic relationships between teenagers has also drawn scrutiny from critics who argue the series models unhealthy relationship dynamics for young readers.