The first Taylor Jenkins Reid book I read was last year's Malibu Rising. Overall, it was an entertaining book and I did appreciate what TJR was trying to accomplish with it, but unfortunately, I couldn't stand most of the characters (it wouldn't be a stretch to say I hated most of them), plus "the party" storyline (which I felt was written too OTT for my tastes) nearly derailed the entire story for me. Not surprisingly, given this experience, I was definitely more than a little wary going into TJR's latest work, Carrie Soto is Back. We were first introduced to Carrie in Malibu Rising and while she was only in a few scenes in that book, her brash behavior and outsized attitude were enough to make her stand out (not necessarily in a good way, in my opinion). I certainly didn't have the best impression of Carrie after that book, and for the first half of this one, I actually liked her even less (if that's even possible). To me, Carrie was the epitome of the type of entitled, arrogant, self-absorbed character that never ceases to frustrate me — and yes, there were quite a few scenes where she was downright mean (and that's putting it nicely). To be honest, throughout most of the first half, there were so many moments when I was tempted to just throw in the towel and call it a day (it also didn't help that I'm not into sports at all, so all the tennis lingo and references went completely over my head) — what kept me going though was the writing, which flowed beautifully into a well-crafted, emotional story (with a satisfying ending).
I definitely was able to connect more with this story than TJR's previous one (even though I know absolutely nothing about tennis or the elite world of professional sports). I think the reason for that is because, in this case, there wasn't a huge, revolving door of annoying characters that detracted from the main story. Instead, we actually get to see Carrie grow and evolve in different areas — from her oftentimes fraught relationship with her father/coach, to her romance with Bowe Huntley, to her business relationship with her agent Gwen, and most importantly, her attitude toward her sport as a whole as well as her fellow competitors. These are the types of stories I enjoy the most: where the characters are well-developed, often flawed and far from perfect, even largely unlikable throughout most of the story, but they grow in subtle ways that are most meaningful when we as readers get to journey with them from the beginning of the story to the end.
This book made me excited to read TJR again, and while I look forward to her next book, I should probably also get cracking on her backlist works as well (almost all of which have been on my TBR for while already). Hopefully I'll be able to get to at least one of her other books before the next new one comes out!
Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley.
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