This was a really enjoyable novel. It's about a comeback of a fictional tennis legend, Carrie Soto, who at the age of 37 goes back on tour to defend her title. There is a little bit of family drama and a love story for a good measure, but the focus here is the sport and personal growth. Some of the characters from Reid's other novels get a few mentions, which was fun.

Descriptions of tennis matches were very well done. I'm not a big tennis fan myself and I had my doubts going into reading this, but I worried for no reason. It was really exciting, almost as exciting as some of the best matches I've ever watched. Actually, after reading this book I got inspired to rewatch the end of the 2001 Wimbledon men's finals which always brings me to tears. Tennis was not a problem for me in this book.

What I didn't like was the social commentary was in this book. While I wholeheartedly agree that women athletes get a very different treatment by the public than their male counterparts, somehow the way Reid did it sounded superficial and formulaic, as if she just put it because it had to be mentioned. I expected more from her in this respect.



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Fun! ( )

A 37 yr old woman?s record is broken after being retired for 6 yrs. She is shattered by this and decides she must return to playing tennis to win back her record for most grand slams won. So, the story begins of the work this takes, the toll on her father, finding a player to play with her and to learn to love tennis just for the pleasure of playing. Kirkus: A retired tennis player returns to the game to defend her Grand Slam record.Carrie Soto is the best tennis player in the world, and she knows it. Her father, Javier, is a former tennis champion himself, and he's dedicated his life to coaching her. By the time she retires in 1989, she holds the record for winning 20 Grand Slam singles titles. But then, in 1994, Nicki Chan comes along. Nicki is on the verge of breaking Carrie?s record, and Carrie decides she can?t let that happen: She?s coming out of retirement, with her father coaching her, to defend her record�and her reputation. Carrie was never a friendly player, preferring to focus on both a brutal game and brutal honesty, and now the media has a field day with her return to the sport as a 37-year-old. At times, it seems like everyone is waiting for her to fail, but when Carrie wants something, she doesn?t give up easily. Along the way, she reconnects with Bowe Huntley, a 39-year-old tennis player she once had a fling with. Now they need to help each other train, but Carrie quickly realizes she might need him for more than just tennis¥if she can let herself be vulnerable for the first time in her life. Reid writes about the game with suspense, transforming a tennis match into a page-turner even for readers who don?t care about sports. Will Carrie win? And, more importantly, will she finally make time for a life outside of winning? Reid has scored another victory and created another memorable heroine with Carrie Soto, a brash, often unlikable character whose complexity makes her leap off the page. Sports commentators may call her ?The Battle Axe? or worse, but readers will root for her both on and off the court.A compulsively readable look at female ambition.

Audiobook

I really enjoyed this quick book about a tennis player trying to make a comeback after a six year retirement. Carrie is a difficult protagonist but is believable to me as a type A obsessed by perfection pro athlete. I’d have preferred it if a little bit more of the story dealt with cracking open her tough exterior but I was glad we got the parts we did get there.

The audio version of this book was pretty good with the familiar voices from tennis broadcasting. I was annoyed by the accent used for Carrie’s Argentinian father but otherwise I liked the production.

I can’t decide if I like or am annoyed by the little Easter eggs to the author’s other books. ( )

Representation: Black, Asian and Latino/a characters
Trigger warnings: Death of a mother from a car accident and a father, physical injury, grief and loss depiction, sexism
Score: Nine and a half points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

After reading and not enjoying Our Missing Hearts which sounded so promising but ultimately did not deliver, I was hoping this one would be better and when I discovered it hiding on the shelves of one of the two libraries I go to, I immediately picked it up and read it. When I finished it, it was so enjoyable that it made an outstanding impression on the author, and made me want to read more of her works. It starts with the main and titular character Carrie Soto, or Carrie for short, living with her father after her mother passed and from there she trained playing tennis with him (which is the point of the entire narrative.) Here's where the narrative shines: I rooted for Carrie as a character and I appreciate how well she's written given that she's so complex and even has development from being an unlikable character to a more humble one which I enjoyed reading. Is it me or does this story feel well executed since it has so many events and actions going on yet it never feels disjoined or forcibly crammed and manages a fast pace? I've heard there are some references to the author's other pieces of literature and I can't wait to read those (they sound promising.) Only a few pages in Carrie is at the top when she retires and stops playing for a few years until I get to the 1990s where she discovers another (British Asian) tennis player, Nicki Chan, is catching up to Carrie's prestige, because Carrie earned 20 awards but soon enough Nicki meets and overtakes that, so now it is Carrie's goal to return for one last time to attempt to beat Nicki at tennis which takes up the second half. The action was swift and snappy throughout but sometimes it can slow down (which is mostly great but that all depends on circumstances) to explore character dynamics and other issues like sexism. It all comes to a bittersweet head as Carrie does so well ever after her retirement but she accepts that her time is over (she even befriends Nicki) making a satisfying conclusion. Now that's the level I want to see for future reads. I know not all of them can reach that but I hope I will find some outstanding ones. ( )