The art of Taylor Jenkins Reid is that her novels can be read on several different levels. If you are looking for a nineties tennis novel, that documents the changes taking place in the women’s game, this is your book. If you want to learn how a woman who was raised to be the best ever, legendary in her sport, can find peace with her aging body, the passage of time, and the need for finding a new purpose, again, here you are. If you want to read about how a woman loses her mother at a young age, can possibly trust opening her heart completely, to trusting someone again, especially when men all seem to want a piece of her for their own needs, this is the book. In fact, some of these women’s issues are examined at different angles in each of Reid’s books.

I would encourage you to also read Reid’s other related novels, also discussed here: https://www.margueritereads.com/home/the-seven-husbands-of-evelyn-hugo-by-taylor-jenkins-reid, https://www.margueritereads.com/home/malibu-rising-by-taylor-jenkins-reid, https://www.margueritereads.com/home/daisy-jones-and-the-six-by-taylor-jenkins-reid. Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones, and now Carrie Soto are all incidentally and cleverly intertwined, creating Reid’s fictional world grounded firmly in a real set of times and places. An article that sketches out the world and the links can be found here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2022/08/taylor-jenkins-reid-universe-carrie-soto-malibu-rising.

Reid builds the suspense very well, writing another page-turner. No one is black-and-white; Soto battles Nicki Chan on the tennis court, but the two players cannot help but appreciate each other’s ability and drive. They are cut of the same cloth. They have given all of themselves to the drive to be the best, and each know that they would not have achieved their personal level of greatness without the challenge of the other. They are both outsiders in their own way, not the slender, blond, blue-eyed woman player that the media has come to adore. They have each set new standards of play and performance at odds with the pressures of the media, the tennis organizations, and the sponsors.

Finding love that can last the rigors and demands of playing sports at the highest levels is a challenge few of the greatest have achieved (sad recent example of Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen). Tom Brady is also a recent example of how the greatest players need to figure out how to gracefully leave the top, finding a new absorbing pursuit that can provide the challenge and intensity of their former role. Reid’s book handles that issue very smoothly, and I confess, I did not see that exact resolution coming. I enjoy Reid’s books for their natural-feeling resolutions— I don’t feel the author neatly tying up loose ends, as it seems to flow organically to a close.

I tried to not give too much away. I only hope I have shared enough to tempt you to take on all four of these books, and enjoy Reid’s created world. What a nice Christmas present these four books would make! I look forward to seeing who in this universe will deserve the focus in her next novel. Highly recommended.