Book Review: Carrie Soto is Back, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

You know that feeling where you don’t want a book to end, but you also can’t help reading faster and faster in order to figure out what happens next? That was Carrie Soto is Back for me. Let’s get into this book and why I loved it so very much.

Carrie Soto is Back | Taylor Jenkins Reid

Adult contemporary

Published August 30, 2022

371 pages | Ebook

goodreads

Carrie Soto is the best tennis player in the world. And she’s earned it. After years of training, competing, and sacrifice, Carrie rocketed to the top of the world rankings, earning a reputation for being willing to do anything just to win, disliked by just as many people as those who love her. When she finally retires, she holds the record for most Slam titles held. But six years after she finally set the tennis racket down, Carrie watches as phenomenal athlete Nicki Chan ties that record.

Refusing to let this happen, Carrie makes the shocking decision to step out from retirement and back onto the court, determined to make the record her own once again. Coached by her father, Carrie enters into one more year of tennis tournaments – four more chances to win another title. As she progresses through the year, she makes new friends, and just might discover a little more about the sport she loves – and herself.

Summary is my own. Parts of the summary may be borrowed from Goodreads.

Taylor Jenkins Reid knows how to tell a story.

This was obvious to me, of course, when I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, or Daisy Jones and the Six, or Malibu Rising. And yet, of all of this phenomenal author’s stories, I’m convinced that Carrie Soto is Back is the best one yet.

Characters are TJR’s strong suit. My absolute favorite thing about this novel was the depth and growth of Carrie. When we meet our protagonist, her killer drive to win and unfriendly comments towards opponents make her immediately unlikable to all those around her in the novel. I first want to comment on Jenkins Reid’s ability to make Soto a terrible person and yet still likable to the reader. From the very beginning, I was rooting for Carrie to win, regardless of the way she acted around others – at one point, I found myself thinking, wow, if I ever met her in real life, or had to play a sport against her, I would hate her, and yet I couldn’t help but cheer her on.

And then – the development. As Carrie progresses through the novel, she starts to realize that she has been playing tennis for all the wrong reasons. This novel is truly a love letter to a sport, a masterpiece depicting all the reasons that sports should be fun and enjoyable. Carrie’s shift from playing only to win, to playing because it is the sport she loves, is fantastic. It happens so slowly that you don’t even notice it, but it’s obvious that the Carrie at the end is very different from the Carrie from the beginning. As someone who loves sports myself, it felt so amazing to read this entire book about loving your sport, and playing for yourself, not for others. It felt like TJR took all the reasons I love playing softball, and inserted them into a book about tennis.

The other characters in this book shone too. Carrie’s relationship with her father is absolutely amazing – he’s tough on her, as her coach, but they both love each other so much, and he’s just pushing for her to get better. He’s been her coach since she was just beginning to learn tennis, so they have this really awesome connection where they’re both just trying to help her improve, and they’re able to talk about anything related to the game, and get each other completely.

Bowe, another tennis player who’s trying to play his final professional tennis season, is also fantastic. He and Carrie started off kind of rocky, because Carrie refused to get close to anyone at the beginning, and they also had a history that Carrie didn’t want to touch, but they slowly became closer and had this awesome relationship where they supported each other’s careers and were constantly looking out for each other and helping each other improve. Bowe’s appearance in the book began Carrie’s opening up to other people, and beginning to support other people and look out for them, not just herself.

And lastly, Nicki is just such an awesome person. She becomes a real character pretty late in the book, but she also plays a big part in Carrie’s growth. It was really nice to see her as an actual character, since through most of the book Carrie was just complaining about her all the time, and we were mostly rooting against her. And yet, Soto manages to make ALL the characters likable (or at least all the characters who she wants to make likable).

But let’s also talk about the story. This novel exemplified the high stakes and action that I always love about sports books, and Jenkins Reid wrote it all beautifully. Throughout the novel, Carrie takes place in four Grand Slam events, in an effort to win another slam, and the chance to read four different high stakes matches was really exciting. Each of the matches was different, and you never knew the outcome until it happened – TJR definitely kept me on my toes. This was definitely one of the more sports-centric books that I have read – not only does it cover games and practices, but there is also a lot of talk about strategy and the actual game of tennis. I, personally, know nothing about tennis, but I don’t think that that took away from my enjoyment of the book – I got to learn a little, and all the awesome action filled parts were still there.

Overall, Carrie Soto is Back covered all the things I love most about sports books, along with having amazingly written characters and killer character development. For anyone out there who loves books about sports, I would recommend this to you in a heartbeat, but even if you don’t know a thing about any physical activity, the action and characters in this novel will keep you hooked just the same.

Have you read Carrie Soto is Back, or any of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s other books? Do you like sports books, too? Let me know what you thought about this review!