I always feel in such safe hands with Taylor Jenkins Reid's storytelling and have recommend her backlist titles - especially Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones, far and wide. I'm not interested in tennis or sport generally, so this didn't capture my interest in the way her previous titles have done. However, I'm sure TJR fans who have more appreciation for tennis and the sporting world, will enjoy this book .

I really enjoyed Carrie Solo is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I enjoyed her previous books Malibu Rising and Daisy Jones & The Six and this was just as amazing

This is a great story but maybe my expectations were too high after reading the authors previous novels. I enjoyed it and finished it but was not blown away like the others xx

Like the rest of the world I loved Evelyn Hugo & Daisy Jones os had high hopes for Carrie Soto but unfortunately it missed the spot for me, I found it far too full of tennis detail that bored me and the story was too predictable from the outset. I buddy- read it and we could both predict the next storyline aspects.
If i liked tennis more im sure I would have enjoyed it but it felt a bit too narrow for me, sorry.

Carrie Soto was the best tennis player in the world, setting world records with her skills. But she has been retired for several years now and a new tennis player, Nikki Chan is threatening to steal Carrie’s world record. Carrie Soto is not going to take that lying down, thank you very much. So now, Carrie Soto is back.

If I had to sum up this book in three words it might well be these; So.Much.Tennis.

Seems a silly thing to say right? I mean tennis tournament is right there in the blurb …but for me, the balance in the book was really off due to the sheer amount of plot taken up with tennis matches (it’s all that really happens in terms of plot) and the fact that Carrie Soto is such an unlikeable character. If I loved tennis, I could handle Carrie’s vitriol and enjoy the book for the love of the game. Or, if Carrie was a character I could admire and root for, I could overlook and the tennis lingo.
But the two elements together, meant that reading this book felt like I was at one end of a tennis court and Carrie was at the other, pummelling me with her tennis balls.

So, that is main issue with the book. That and the ending and I can’t elaborate on that without giving spoilers.

What I did like about the book? The humour, often courtesy of Bowe. The fact that aside from Carrie, all of the other characters were very likeable. In fact, I would love to read a book about Nikki Chan’s life (off the tennis court obviously). I also thought the epistolary excerpts worked really well too.

I have loved everything else TJR has written. She is an auto-buy author for me so I will definitely be interested and excited for her next book.

Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Whilst I would say that I really enjoyed Malibu Rising, I absolutely loved Carrie Soto is Back. We all know that Taylor Jenkins Reid is a special kind of writer, and with Carrie Soto she’s woven her magic and then some - it’s something else.

Carrie Soto is Back is, unsurprisingly, the story of Carrie Soto the famed (or maybe better put infamous) tennis pro coming out of retirement to try and reclaim her Slam record. Carrie is in it for one final season and will be coached once more by her father, Javier Soto. She must also swallow her pride in order to train with Bowe Huntley, a man she once had a brief fling with.

This book is just pure magic, I think I felt just about every feeling going whilst reading it. I must admit I’m not the biggest tennis fan generally, but goodness me I had goosebumps reading about the matches in this book! The tension was just palpable and the way TJR wrote the matches, well you literally cannot look away.

I think what really made this book special though was it’s characters. There are 4 key characters in this story, Carrie, Javier, Bowe and Gwen, Carrie’s agent. Carrie isn’t a likeable character but then she’s not supposed to be, you can respect her and what she’s doing whilst not necessarily liking her. But goodness did I feel for her at times. Javier is just a dream, I loved him and the time we got to spend with him and Carrie together. Equally I loved his interactions with Bowe who was another great character and a brilliant balance to Carrie. Both Carrie and Bowe are driven in trying to achieve the same and yet are so different in outlook. I also thought Gwen was a brilliant key support to Carrie. These characters are written with such depth that they just leap off the page.

This book is exhilarating, it’s powerful and it’s very very special. Yet again TJR has given us a book where her characters feel so very real and where you get so immersed in their stories that you can’t bare to leave them when it ends. I loved it!

Yet another great read from Taylor Jenkins Reid. Carrie Soto is back is about a female tennis champion who at the age of 37 is making a comeback to see if she has still got what it takes after Nicki Chan has beaten her record and she wants it back. I’ve never really been into tennis and although this book was almost a little too tennis heavy for me it definitely made me understand the game more and there was enough of another storyline going on to keep me hooked.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

We featured Carrie Soto is Back in our article '22 more books to look out for in 2022' on Caboodle, the rewards programme from National Book Tokens.

"Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback. By the time Carrie Soto retires, she is the best tennis player the world has ever seen. At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record."

I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS BOOK!

In my eyes, Taylor Jenkins Reid can do no wrong. This is as imaginative and immersive as her other offerings, and one I felt like I couldn’t put down as TJR so cleverly weaves together complex emotions to create something visceral and beautiful.

I really loved that Carrie didn’t feel the need to change herself or bow to expectations and instead was a strong willed and uncompromising steadfast and talented woman, who is passionate and ruthless about her sport without feeling the need to be something she isn’t just to be liked. She is consistently ambitious and I loved that we just saw her fierce determination grow as the novel continued, and she just was who she was.

Exceptional storytelling that had me cheering from the sidelines and feeling Carrie’s struggle and relentless prowess to defend her honour. INCREDIBLE! Can’t wait to read it again

This is the story of tennis champion Carrie Soto who lost her mother at a young age and was coached by her father into becoming the best women's tennis player the world had seen. After many years, Carrie decided to come out of retirement to defend her Grand Slam record.

For me, the problem is that Carrie is such an unlikeable character. She's given the nickname "Battle Axe" for good reason! She's emotionally detached and unavailable. She's mean to the other players, her competitors. Tennis seems less of a passion and more of a duty, something she must master and win. Her whole life is about training and winning. If she's not winning, she's not happy. While she rarely loses, when she does, she's a very sore loser. At one point, she tells the media outlets, after a match, "that win was embarrassingly easy." She's arrogant, angry, and very hard to root for.

My general impression of tennis players in the real world is that they're kind people, even if a bit quirky or dramatic. Many of them face overwhelming pressure and mental health challenges. Last year we saw Naomi Osaka come out with her own struggles with anxiety and depression, which was brave and necessary so that players can get the help they need. I think that's an interesting story, and I'd have liked to read about "lifting the veil" on what players really deal with on a day-to-day basis. Not some 30-something-year-old angry, conceited, win-at-all-costs player.

Also, 70% of this book is reading play-by-plays of tennis matches or commentary from sportscasters, and I'd personally rather watch tennis than read it.

I thought this one was just okay, but can understand the appeal for others. Especially if you're a huge fan of TJR.

As a tennis nut, this pitch immediately jumped out at me - and as a forever fan of TJR, I was delighted to find this was my favorite of her novels yet!

So here I am; another Taylor Jenkins Reid novel in my list. Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular.

By the time Carrie retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Slam titles. And if you ask her, she is entitled to everyone. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father as her coach. In spite of it all: Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback.

I enjoyed the last TJR novel i read. It was exciting and full of intrigue. Carrie Soto is Back focusses on a tennis and relationships that cover childhood to champion. This is a hard book to rate because whilst I enjoyed the writing, I feel this was a weak novel that focussed more on tennis than relationships and it was hard to keep myself focussed on that.

The story itself was addictively compelling; I read this book in a very short span of time and it kept me intrigued, but not enough to be excited whenever I picked it up. There’s no doubt that Jenkins can weave an overarching story about the complications of fame, womanhood and relationships but I can't say I'm a tennis fan and that showed when I felt bored during the matches. Carrie Soto is a fantastically complex character who is driven by the game but also her own self-confidence. She struggles with relationships due to her egotistical nature and is constantly under fire from everyone in the media. The narration is great, showing us TV interviews and posts that give us a third-party point-of-view and it added to the athletic nature of the story.

This was an impressive book that ended up as a little bit of a let-down for me compared to other works. An enjoyable reach that just didn't quite hit the mark.

When retired world champion Tennis player Carrie Soto has her grand slam record threatened she comes out of retirement at the age of thirty seven to try and claim it back.
I have no interest in Tennis, nor do I know much about it but I absolutely loved this book.
By the time I got to the end I was holding my breathe in anticipation. Absolutely stunning character developments and story!
Another great from Taylor Jenkins Reid.

I’m a big fan of TJR’s previous novels so I was delighted to receive an ARC but unfortunately Carrie Soto missed the mark a little for me. This novel didn’t evoke the setting of its predecessors (Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and Malibu Rising) quite as effectively and Carrie Soto’s character was not especially likeable. However, her persona in the courts as a bad-ass player compared with her more vulnerable, isolated side with endless affection for her loving father was admirable.
The other characters felt pretty two-dimensional, perhaps deliberately, to ensure Carrie remained at the centre of the novel, and emphasise her isolation as she made her return to tennis. It seems doubtful she would make so few connections to her competitors in the tennis world, and this would have been a interesting angle for some sub-plots.
Carrie is single-mindedly focussed on winning, an unsurprising trait for a championship athlete, and while this was an interesting theme to explore, it didn’t give much opportunity to explore the character beyond her ambition.

I read a review in which someone described this as ‘plot-driven’ but this was absolutely not the case for me. The plot was slow and meandering and didn’t come to much of a climax. There was a LOT of description of tennis matches, some of which were exciting, but there were too many to sustain my interest each time and I found myself skipping paragraphs at a time.

That said, I did enjoy the novel as a holiday read. TJR fans will enjoy it (especially as she employs her usual intertextuality - Carrie Soto herself reading ‘Daisy Jones’ and the reference to Mike Riva did make me smile!) but where the other novels have made a lasting impression on me, sadly Carrie Soto will not stay with me.

Just love everything this author brings out!!! Definitely will be buying copies of this one for friends and family! just finished this one and I really liked it. It gave a glimpse into the making of a Professional Tennis Player, something I knew nothing about, but found really entertaining. It felt almost like reading a thriller, I was flipping the pages quickly to see if Carrie would win or lose the match. I felt jittery and that on the edge of my seat feeling with tension on how things would work out.
I inhabited Carrie’s world. This is where Taylor Jenkins Reid really excels. She can take a rough around the edges character like Carrie Soto, who starts out abrasive, rude, and self-centered and make you really care for how she does. You will route for Carrie to do better. In 1994, Carrie has gotten back into tennis because she wants to defend her record she won years prior. Carrie does not know how to lose, and winning at tennis is the only way she can imagine one can be a winner. I think she also loves tennis because it seems so black or white. You are great if you win and a complete mess up if you lose.
The relationship between Carrie and her father is so endearing. He is her coach and biggest fan, but most importantly he is her biggest fan in life, he always loves and supports her through everything. He sees all Carrie’s flaws and knows she needs to broaden her life, but he has such a fine way of approaching this. When she is training for a tournament, he is all in. He helps her perfect her game in every way, yet he also makes it clear that he loves her just the same if she loses the match. She is perfect the way she is to him.
Carrie does have some maturing to do, and throughout the book she does start to change. She has been so competitive that she has never let anyone into her life. Another tennis player, a man Bowe Huntley also is trying to give it another try on the tennis circuit. Carrie needs him to practice her game with, but slowly starts to let him into her life and learn from someone else. She can finally see someone beyond just their tennis stats. Her biggest competitor, the one after her record, Nicki Chan, Carrie thinks she must hate, but Chan teaches Carrie how to play the game with real dignity. Nicki, also let’s Carrie know that others struggle with challenges, too and the titles and honors are not purely hers. Can’t wait to see what’s coming out next! Five stars from me ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After loving Daisy Jones and the Six by the same author I was delighted to read her latest. This book didn’t disappoint, even for a complete tennis novice, I was completely drawn into the world of competitive sport. The relationship between Carrie and her father was beautifully drawn and I loved the psychological angle of winner’s mentality. I will be recommending this far and wide. Thanks NetGalley!

Taylor Jenkins Reid has done it again! Her characters are utterly believable- within a few pages I was convinced that if I googled Carrie Soto’s name I’d discover she was real. The drama is delicious, the dialogue breezy and fun, and the romance plot perfect. I devoured this book in 2 sittings and may well go back and read it again.

With her trademark economical writing style, Reid has created a compelling and addictive narrative that thrusts you deep into the world of professional tennis. I tore through the book, swept up from the first in Soto's story as she tries to untangle what it means to be the best and what truly matters to her.

Taylor has outdone herself again!! Filled with pure tension and drama, i read this book in one sitting. I felt completely immersed into her world and felt like i knew every character. Another beautiful novel by taylor jenkins reid.

Taylor Jenkins Reid nails it again. What a BEAUTIFUL book. As usual, a wonderfully easy, enjoyable read, I was gripped and flew through it. It had such powerful messages and I particularly enjoyed the subtle exploration of misogyny within women's sports and the relationship between Carrie and her father well and truly had my heart. TJR can do no wrong and she's solidly an auto-buy author for me. Big, big recommend.