Carrie Soto is Back

At the time of this writing, Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid has over 23,000 customer reviews on Amazon and a cumulative 4.4-star rating. The plot revolves around an aging tennis superstar coming out of retirement to defend her record number of Grand Slam titles. This book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list making it the obvious next stop in our current exploration of tennis “beach reads.”

Reid is arguably best known for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which was published in 2017 to both commercial and critical acclaim. She also wrote Daisy Jones & the Six, which won several literary awards and has been adapted into a miniseries by Amazon. I haven’t read either of those books, but I am sure they are quite good.

While Reid is a well-established, critically acclaimed author, it is apparent from the onset of Carrie Soto is Back that she doesn’t know a thing about tennis. Consequently, the book is filled with plot holes and storyline absurdities that will make it a challenge to enjoy by anyone who has a clue about the sport. How the professional tours operate, the tennis industry works, and the actual match play descriptions were so far off that they detract from the reading experience.

Reid’s books are widely considered to be “historical fiction, ” making it somewhat hard to overlook that she got the tennis so painfully wrong. Since most of the world doesn’t understand tennis either, the remaining question is whether the story stands on its own despite the overall flaws in the premise.

Unfortunately, the growth arc of an aging tennis superstar grappling with the reality that her Grand Slam record will fall is superficial and shallow. The grand narrative that the protagonist, Carrie Soto, reaches for something she wanted only to discover an alternative purpose in life comes off as inconsistent rather than profound.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a gifted writer, so the book is naturally engaging and easy to read. Unfortunately, I had the sense throughout that this was the product of an established author looking to cash in quickly on a novel with themes fortuitously timed with Serena Williams’s retirement. I wish she had taken more time to understand the tennis.