Carrie Soto Is Back
Ratings317
Average rating4.2
Loved it! I have been wanting to read a Taylor Jenkins Reid book for a while but couldn't get excited about Malibu Rising or Daisy Jones and the Six but after reading the first few pages of Carrie Soto I was hooked. I loved the drama, the emotion and the whole ride with Carrie. Highly recommended.
Who knew a book about tennis could be so good? Taylor Jenkins Reid never misses (no pun intended). I wish so badly that Carrie Soto, Nicki Chan, Cortez, Antonovich, and Bowe Huntley were real. There were so many moments where I wished I could look up one of their games on YouTube to watch them play.
3.5 stars
Enjoyed this read. However it would have been better without the unnecessary language.
Very good, but my least favorite TJR title I've read. Part of it is that I'm really not interested in tennis, which is on me and not the book. But I also felt like it lacked some of the emotional depth I expect from TJR's books. Glad I read/listened though!
“People don't want new, they want the familiar done differently”
A 7/10 4* from me because:
- It is unequivocally as advertised - an easy read, Sunday afternoon on ITV4 story
- It largely achieves my interpretation of its aims in how it presents the (fairly standard) characters and key messages
- It is definitely compelling enough to want to continue reading, despite the on-the-rails plot
The tennis fan in me inwardly cringed a bit at some of the Basil Exposition explanations of the rules and basics of the sport but it's limited enough to be distracting only in a Drive To Survive / Break Point way.
For a different perspective on the cost of elite success in pro tennis, Andre Agassi's autobiography ‘Open' is excellent and very honest.
Overall I'd be happy enough to pick up another TJR at the airport.
I love TJR! I will read everything she writes.
When I first heard about this book, I wasn't excited. I didn't care about Carrie Soto in Malibu Rising and I've definitely never cared about tennis.
But apparently that doesn't matter. Cause this was great.
I love how TJR writes unlikeable characters. I always root for all of them! And Carrie Soto is no exception. She's awful and I love her! Ha ha
I cared about all the tennis stuff, and the relationship between Carrie and her “rival”, and the love story, and the father/daughter relationship. I loved it all. It made me happy.
NO MANCHES!!! NO MANCHES!!!
Con cada libro que leo de esta diosa llamada, Taylor Jenkins Reid hace que me recuerde claramente que es mi escritora favorita. Cada personaje que crea, y su historia hacen que tenga la necesidad de buscar en Google todo acerca de ella, sus partidos, sus chismes, sus redes sociales, ¡TODO!
Y luego despierto y me doy cuenta que en realidad nunca existió. Y me pongo a llorar.
En este libro en verdad siento que Taylor ha escrito a uno de sus mejores personajes, Carrie, el más humano hasta ahora. Y es que leer todo el libro y seguir su vida, su carrera, sus logros ¡Por favor! Me pondría a ver todos sus partidos si es que estuvieran en Youtube. Y ese final...
¡ESE FINAL!
Creo que hace mucho que un final me dejaba tan satisfecha, todo lo que tenía que pasar pasó.
Pero no solo Carrie se lleva el protagonismo, ¡SU PAPÁ!!!!!! De los mejores padres que he leído, y el culpable que haya llorado en medio de mi clase de preparatoria. Javier Soto tenía a sus fans, y obviamente yo soy una.
¡Pero es que hasta Nickie era increíble!
Al final yo también la terminé queriendo tanto, y en el partido final sea quien ganará yo la apoyaba. Estaba como
¡Vamos Carrie!
¡Vamos Nickie!
Eso sí, mientras leía nunca entendí como se jugaba el tenis, y al terminarlo sigo sin entenderlo. Pero aún así sentía toda la emoción en los partidos.
Grandioso libro precioso.
Me acabo de dar cuenta que este es el libro número 100 que he leído en mi vida, que gran coincidencia.
A compulsively readable beautiful story about a father/daughter relationship and the hunger of being the best. I am not interested in tennis at all, but this book kept me really intrigued because it was so well paced. Loved the different matches also broken up with mixed media through articles and interviews. I didn't love Carrie's character, but looking back on it, she reminds me of herself. Her father's death had me sobbing, and he reminded me so much of my dad. I normally love a romance but this one could not hold a candle to the father/daughter relationship. Loved the full circle ending of her becoming a coach TJR really knows how to create such realistic and rich characters.
I find it funny that i didn't really like Carrie soto in the beginning or middle but closer to the end I absolutely loved her and was routing for her! 3.5 stars
Loved this book! I've been playing tennis for a couple of years now, but even for those who don't know anything of the sport this is still an amazing book. It shows some hard working characters who'll do anything to win. 5/5
”We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.”
I am fully convinced that Taylor Jenkins Reid is a mastermind. I believed that before I read this but this book just helped cement that for me.
I enjoy the way that TJR has the ability to write stories in non-traditional ways. Daisy Jones & the Six is the perfect example of this by how it is told in an interview format. Every work that TJR does is original and timeless.
Carrie was such a strong, empowering character and I loved reading about her. She quickly became a character that I believe I will think about for a long time. What I love the most about the main characters that feature in TJR's books is that they are unapologetically imperfect. They're human.
Also, Bowen was such a highlight for me. I love him so much.
I loved coming along on Carrie's journey to realise that it's okay to not be perfect. This felt like a love letter. I will most definitely be rereading this in the future.
Damn you TJR! I don't give five stars easily, I don't understand tennis, I don't speak Spanish and yet here I am. I finished this in one day and I so badly want this to be a movie because I need to see this on screen. I just really enjoyed this one
3.5 stars
The reason for this was because for 2/3 of the book, it was boring as hell. And the writing on the wall for Carrie. As someone who is a fan of an unreliable narrator, I have no problem disliking characters. However, this girl was annoying as hell. Super stubborn, persistent to a fault–it makes sense. The thing that gets me was that there was no reprieve for the reader from this constant situations of Carrie “shooting herself in the foot”, because there are no other POVs or narrative shifts, like Reid's other books. There are a few newspaper articles and sport casters, but nothing like Malibu Rising or Evelyn Hugo.
Another thing I continue to be disappointed about is that Reid is a wonderful world builder. As a historical fiction/ contemporary writer, I feel like I have never seen this level happening before for a non-fantasy/ Sci-fi genre, between several ‘stand alone' novels. Are we forgetting Carrie Soto's large cameo in Malibu Rising? I was hoping to be able to hear her point of view as the reader for that in this novel. And i truly cannot wrap my head around why this isn't happening for multiple of Reid's books. Its such a missed opportunity and truly unfortunate. I really hope we get unreleased chapters at some point because this point ALONE is making me really unenthusastic about her most recent and future work. (Also, can we talk about how Daisy Jones makes a cameo as well?)
This book was riding 2 stars hard core, but ended up being 3.5 because of the last 100 pages. As someone who recently lost her father, the relationship that Carrie and Javier have is fantastic and pulled at my heart. There were several instances at the end with evens that made me relive a lot, but I appreciate the talent of Reid to be able to put such a loss into words. I also loved Beau and Nikki's characters. I think they were dynamic and expressive people, I only wish they were introduced earlier in the narrative to break up the monotony of Carrie's dialogue.
My rating of 4 indicates I liked the book more than I actually did. The craftwork was excellent. TJR created a world-class tennis player, and her coach father, out of whole-cloth and covered her entire career. Amazing! There was too much tennis for me to actually enjoy it, though. But well done TJR! (I had to listen at 3x; I was determined to read this one! ;) The last 10 to 15% was better (for me) because there was more than just tennis.
If TJR has no fans I am dead!!!
Read this alone side a close friend while i was going through hell and this book put me through more hell, highly recomend you will cry
5:
First and foremost, I am a Carrie Soto apologist. I am justifying every single despicable thing Carrie did and said, because I love her. Oh Carrie, you and I are in a parasocial relationship, except ours is way worse than every other parasocial relationship, because you don't even exist ♡
I say that, but I didn't know who to root for at the end, because I am tender-hearted and I love Nicki Chan as well. I had an inkling of what she'd turn out to be like, but damn, she was so much better. What blossomed out of her and Carrie's rivalry felt like a breath of fresh air. I wanted it and squealed with glee when it happened, because I did not dare just hope for it.
This was everything I'd ever wanted from a TJR novel and although at times it was predictable and somewhat clichéd, as it stands, it is perhaps my favorite out of all of them. I couldn't put it down. Just... wow. Consider me wowed.
My heart raced and leaped and broke. I am sad to part ways with Carrie and Javier (that's where most of my heart broke), and Bowe, Nicki and Gwen, but it was so fun a ride.
If you pick this book up, I hope you like tennis, because at least half of its chapters portray tennis matches in minute detail, including strategy and technique for just about every point. I skimmed through those parts, and found the rest of Carrie Soto is Back to be standard bio-pic of a tough-as-nails athlete trying to make an unlikely comeback at age 37, and recalling everything that brought her to this point.
I don't mind unlikeable heroines if they have some depth or nuance, but Carrie Soto is basically one-dimensional. She lives for tennis, doesn't suffer fools gladly, and refuses to let anyone get close except her father/coach. There is no character growth until the very end of the book, and we barely get to experience the impact of that change. YMMV if you are a tennis fan and can wax rhapsodically about how it feels to serve the perfect ace or break your opponent's serve.
This one's about a tennis star (seems very heavily inspired by Serena Williams) who comes out of retirement for one last attempt at a grand slam.
Even though Carrie Soto as a character shouldn't be likeable, Taylor Jenkins Reid just writes really good characters!!