Carrie Soto Is Back

✮✮✮✮

Sep 20

Carrie Soto Is Back - Taylor Jenkins Reid

my review : ✮✮✮✮

Carrie Soto is a badass.

Let me say this, I know virtually nothing about tennis, and I was totally enraptured by this story. TJR does a great job of creating complex, flawed characters that you cannot help but root for. Her stories have the readability of a beach read with nuanced characters and superb writing.

I think one should always preface a TJR review by stating their favorite book by her; mine is Daisy Jones & The Six. It may be because it’s the first TJR book I ever read, but I was hooked from the beginning and still think of it years after finishing it!

Our story follows esteemed tennis player Carrie Soto, who was the greatest female tennis player in the world. She has broken all the records, won all the titles, and is currently enjoying (?) retirement. We meet Carrie as she’s attending the US Open watching the newest tennis sensation, Nikki Chan, threaten to break her records. With this imminent threat to her legacy, Carrie decides to return to tennis 6 years after her retirement.

The storytelling was great, making this book impossible to put down. I think this would make an excellent book club book because it asks questions that are just dying to be answered by a group of well-read women! Overall, I loved it and would highly recommend it.

OK, now let’s get into the backlash with this story. Here is my understanding of the situation: TJR is a white woman writing about a Latina woman. I don’t mean to oversimplify it, as the issue is layered and complex, but it seems to come down to two things. Firstly, TJR can’t possibly understand what it means to be a Latina woman in America in the 90s (or anytime), and writing about that experience is disingenuine. Also, the publishing industry seems to drastically skew white (80% of writers are white), so to have a white woman write about the Latina experience vs. giving minority writers a voice is troubling. This reminds me a bit of American Dirt and similar feedback the author received when writing that story. I want you to have all the facts (and feel free to do your own research!), so you can form your own opinion before diving into this book.