Carrie Soto is Back (Book Review)

It has taken me an unconscionably long time to wade through my TBR to Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. There is no good reason for this; I’ve been eagerly anticipating it since its publication over a year ago, but every time it got to the top of my library requests something came up. First my brother was visiting from Colorado and I didn’t go pick it up. Then I had to prepare for a book club, and then I had a major backlog of reviews. Finally, though, I succeeded in grabbing it from the library and proceeded to tear through it in a matter of days.

What’s it about?

Carrie Soto is the greatest tennis player of all time. Or, at least, she was. A horrified Carrie watches from the sideline, a few years into her retirement, as her Grand Slam record is snatched from her by powerhouse Nicki Chan. Having given everything up for her career, Carrie decides at age thirty-seven to come out of retirement and reclaim her record. With her father/coach by her side, Carrie wades back into the world of competitive sports despite the risks to her body, her sponsorships, and—perhaps most dangerously—her reputation.

What’d I think?

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a master, and her forte is forcing her readers to deeply love and sympathize with difficult and even unlikeable heroines. The women in her previous novels, particularly Daisy and Evelyn, could be rough around the edges, but Carrie makes them look like sweethearts. Like many readers, my first exposure to Carrie Soto the character was not in Carrie Soto is Back, but rather in Malibu Rising. In that novel, Carrie plays a bit part. She’s a ruthless tennis star who has an affair with the heroine’s husband. When he leaves Carrie to return to his wife Nina, Carrie crashes Nina’s party and threatens to set things on fire. She’s not a totally unsympathetic character, but she’s certainly not someone we’re primed to like or root for. 

Despite this, I wasn’t at all worried to have her as the next heroine. As I said, TJR has a talent for difficult women, and that shines with Carrie. The novel leans into Carrie’s ruthlessness and her casual cruelty, but it contextualizes them. Dedicated to an impossible goal of perfection from a very young age, Carrie has dedicated not only her life but her every moment to tennis. Convinced by her loving but flawed father Javier that her destiny is to be quantifiably the best tennis player to ever live, Carrie determines her end goal and won’t rest until she achieves it, not fully understanding even well into adulthood that she has set herself a goal—absolute unequivocal domination—that is not only unattainable in of itself but detrimental to the other aspects of her life. Even beyond this internal anguish, Carrie has to contend with a national spotlight. The novel is interspersed with articles and talk show transcripts about Carrie’s career that demonstrate the misogyny and racism that she faces. 

We follow Carrie both during her original career as a young phenom and in her come-back run. We see her step onto the world stage as a total unknown who quickly builds a reputation as a woman relentless and even heartless both on and off the court; later, we see her as an established persona fighting to defend her titles while maybe challenging that Battle Axe reputation. It’s a lot of fun to grapple with Carrie as a character. On one hand we can absolutely understand and empathize with her. We see her repeatedly dismissed because she’s not as thin or as conventionally attractive (read: white) as some of her competitors. She’s expected to be gracious and ladylike even while she sees male tennis stars behaving far worse without comment. At the same time, though, it can be difficult to see her callousness towards her competitors. The way that she joyfully exploits injuries to win matches and trash-talks other women certainly does a lot to explain why she isn’t well-liked. 

I love terrible women in fiction. Madonna-whore dichotomy who? Taylor Jenkins Reid doesn’t know her. I can both honestly say that, if Carrie Soto were a real person and I’d seen her gloating a win against a crippled opponent, I’d have rooted against her and that, reading about her and seeing inside her head, I want nothing more than for her to self-actualize and achieve her goals. There are lots of male antiheroes. Why can’t we have a mean, selfish, emotionally constipated middle-aged woman headlining? It’s rare enough to get a well-rounded middle-aged female lead that does roughly fit society’s idea of the typical/ideal woman. To get one who unrepentantly lives however she wants, eschews being likable, and refuses to listen to people who would tell her that she’s too fat or too old to be a champion feels groundbreaking.

I’m frankly bewildered how much TJR got me to care not just about Carrie but about the tennis itself. I’ve never been able to care about other people’s sporting endeavors. I spent my whole life playing sports—soccer from age five through high school, basketball through elementary school, and volleyball from middle school on—and I was deeply invested in competing, but I’ve never cared about watching sports. Watching other people play sports on TV, even if they’re doing it insanely well, holds no appeal whatsoever to me. It takes a gifted storyteller to make me care about the score of a game or the winner of a championship league. It’s all about the way the game intertwines with the characters in play. 

And it does. Reid sets the action of the story up brilliantly so that Carrie’s development, both her personal development and that of her relationships, is absolutely inseparable from her pursuit of Grand Slams. We want Carrie to win because we care about Carrie and it’s what she wants, but we also want her to lose because we want her to learn that she has worth as a human being beyond tennis titles. We also want her to win—and for her eventual practice partner Bowe to win—because to do so would be be a smack in the face to all the people who were ready to write her off for her age. We want her to win because it is beautiful to see her working with her father again after firing him in her youthful career, and there’s nothing more wholesome than a father-daughter pair taking the world by storm, a world that was done with both of them. Reid keeps us watching Carrie battle breathless point after breathless point. We cheer for her when she wins and lament with her when she loses. It all comes so vividly to life, feeling at both like a fairy tale comeback and a true underdog tale (as an ex-athlete who longs to start playing again, but who needs to get back and shape and who has a bum knee, some of Carrie’s  specifics hit very close to home for me). It’s a rare occurrence that I find myself caring so much about something that is, objectively, so low stakes. I loved it. I can’t even imagine how much an actual sports fan would love this novel.

Like all of TJR’s previous novels, Carrie Soto is Back zips along at a brisk clip. The short chapters make it an easy read, and the dynamic characters make it an engaging one. As always, TJR populates the novel with three-dimensional characters. Carrie, Bowe, and Javier are of course the most fully realized, but even the more minor characters—including Nicki Chan, the woman who breaks Carrie’s record and is therefore positioned as the novel’s antagonist—clearly have dimensions underneath the surface. It’s because of this depth of roster, this depth of nuance, that TJR has been able to create this interconnected universe. We couldn’t have gotten Carrie Soto is Back if Carrie hadn’t had that spark of humanity underneath the ‘other woman’ role she played in Malibu Rising.

What’s the verdict?

I only have good things to say about Taylor Jenkins Reid generally and Carrie Soto is Back specifically. Like all her most recent books, this one is compelling and propulsive and its complex and unlikeable heroine delights just as much as she vexes. I’m not typically into sports, so the fact that I was on the edge of my seat for every point should tell you a lot about just how well-written this novel is. The tennis action ties beautifully into the emotional heart and character development going on around it, and the result is a novel that flies by almost as fast as Carrie’s serve. If you haven’t read any of Reid’s work, and particularly if you’re putting it off because you’re not interested in tennis (or surfing or rock bands, etc.) let this be your sign to dive in anyway. They’re wonderful, and Taylor Jenkins Reid is definitely one of my favorite writers; I am absolutely not going to wait a full year to read her next release.

What’s next?

If you haven’t read TJR’s previous novels—especially The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and the Six, and Malibu Rising—do yourself a favor and correct that immediately.

Want to read more books about sports? Here are a few options: Fence by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad (fencing); Running with Lions by Julian Winters (soccer); Check, Please! By Ngozi Ukazu (hockey); Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes (hockey), and Heartstopper by Alice Oseman (rugby). If you’re okay watching instead of reading, I’d also recommend Ted Lasso (soccer) or A League of Their Own (baseball). 

If you want to read more books about fully realized middle aged women, I highly recommend anything by Liane Moriarty. My personal favorite is The Husband’s Secret, but I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve read from her. Nine Perfect Strangers is a very fun book/adaptation comparison.

Rainbow Rowell also has some great middle-aged female protagonists in Landline and Attachments.

Carrie repeatedly puts her aspirations for being the best over her personal relationships and wellbeing. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller also explores this dynamic, with the titular Achilles sacrificing it all to be the greatest warrior Greece has ever known.

And since I don’t have a long list of suggestions, here’s a random one that doesn’t have anything specific to do with Carrie Soto specifically but which is excellent and I don’t get to recommend it often enough: Burn by Patrick Ness. It’s kind of an odd book, so it doesn’t have a lot of immediate if you like this, try this comparisons. It’s a reimagining of the Cold War, but in an alternate universe with dragons. It’s about a young farm girl who is unknowingly a part of a doomsday prophecy, a dragon working on her farm, and a brainwashed cult member sent to kill her. It’s so weird, but absolutely excellent.