Book Blurb:
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two. But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan. At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe” anyway. Even if her body doesn’t move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.
My Review: 3.5 stars
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid has brought us her much-awaited new title for 2022. I’m a huge fan of some of her earlier works like Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and was excited to read this one as well.
From all the book’s hype, I knew this was about a “battle-axe” tennis player who was coming out of a six-year retirement at age thirty-seven. I loved the idea of a comeback professional athlete as I’m a sucker for the underdog. I also played tennis for many years, so I was thrilled to listen to this one. The narrator did a great job, and the characters came alive through the narration.
In my opinion, if you love tennis, you’ll love the book. Tennis drives the story forward, set by set, match by match. I enjoy tennis, but for me the repetition of these plays became exhaustive. It didn’t help that Carrie is a tough nugget to crack and not very likeable. If this were an exposé on the former great, it would be different, but this was fiction, and I wanted more drama. With that being said, I finished the book and was quite satisfied with the ending. Regardless of my annoyance about the constant play, I enjoyed the overall snapshot of a tennis superstar.
Quotes I liked:
One of the great injustices of this rigged world we live in is that women are considered to be depleting with age and men are somehow deepening.”
“This is the tiniest beginning of a terrible, beautiful whole new life.”
“I keep thinking, I don’t cry on the court. I don’t cry on the court. But then I think, Maybe it’s a lie that you have to keep doing what you have always done. That you have to be able to draw a straight line from how you acted yesterday to how you’ll act tomorrow. You don’t have to be consistent. You can change, I think. Just because you want to. And so, for the first time in decades, I stand in front of a roaring crowd and cry.”
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