Reviews with content warning for Death - Carrie Soto Is Back

Huh, I'm surprised by how much I ended up liking this. Nothing about this was surprising - around 20% in, I wrote down my predictions for the plot in my reading journal, and I was pretty spot on. This was my note:

"After coming out of retirement, Carrie is going to get win after win (after a grueling re-training montage and some early losses, maybe) and then realize it was all for nothing and that winning doesn't equate to happiness. Maybe her dad dies."

Oof. 😆 It's like a classic feel-good sports movie, y'know. I got the audiobook and kind of zoned out during the tennis matches, but those were always pretty quick, and as a whole it made for a nice listen. I know nothing about tennis though, so I can't speak on the accuracy (based on others' reviews, it was not accurate, lol).

Overly competitive people irk me to no end, so you can imagine how incredibly annoying Carrie was to me at first, even though it made sense due to her upbringing. Of course she became more likeable as she learned to acknowledge her faults and I found myself rooting for her eventually. I especially enjoyed her banter with Nicki Chan (the best character, hello?!). This was much more entertaining than Malibu Rising, though at this point I don't think anything can live up to Daisy Jones for me.

I loved the ending! What a fun last line.

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kimveach's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Taylor Jenkins Reid continues to surprise and enchant me. I will read anything written by her. This latest book, Carrie Soto is Back, is all about tennis. I'm not generally drawn to books about athletes or sports, but I couldn't put this down. I'll probably watch more tennis in the future, which is not something I could have imagined.

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kaseymkelley's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

TJR does it again. I absolutely loved this heart-warming story and getting to learn more about Carrie Soto. When we meet her in Malibu Rising, she is absolutely awful. I couldn’t stand her. I’m so, so glad TJR wrote more about her story. I absolutely fell in love with Carrie and her passion by the end of the story. I also loved all of the Evelyn, Daisy, & Malibu Easter eggs.

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vinnyvee's review

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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tinybluepixel's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I received an ARC of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is what y'all are saying is the epitome of modern literature? Her best book yet? A literary masterpiece?
If that's true, I have no hope for modern literature.

First of all: After receiving so much (valid!) criticism for her portrayal of Latine characters and their experiences, Taylor Jenkins Reid has, instead of taking that criticism to heart and working on bettering herself, doubled down upon it.

There's an interview in the Cut I have read in preparation for this book. In this interview, TJR says this: "I am a white woman, but the people I love and engage with on a daily basis, they’re not all white women. The people that influence me, who I’m talking to on an intimate level, some of the closest women in my life are not white."
What? "I'm allowed to write Latine characters because I have friends of color?"

She goes on: "I am a white woman living in a society that caters to white people, and my ability to understand the life of someone who is a woman of color is very, very limited because of the way that society caters to my gaze. I lie awake nights literally unable to sleep because I do not know what the right thing to do is. I just approach it with the feeling that the women of color in my life deserve to be the center of stories. The most important thing I can do to make that happen is to recommend and uplift and support women of color. That is my main priority. Me writing a woman of color does not replace the active work I have to do, and I spend a lot of time recommending books by women of color and blurbing books by women of color."

I am losing my mind.

Yes. Women of color deserve to be the center of stories. Women of color also deserve to be published authors. And I cannot believe that TJR thinks that because she has a Spanish editor looking over her book, this enables her to write Latine characters.

A majority of CSiB consists of conversations between Carrie and her father, Javier. Javier is from Argentina, and he came to the US as a grown adult, where he married Carrie's racially ambigious mother. So yeah, it's natural that he would speak Spanish. However, it is not natural that he speaks Spanish the way a bilingual character speaks in a fanfic written by a 13-year-old who desperately wants to show that the character is actually bilingual. No one who is bilingual inserts random Spanish words into an English sentence. Carrie and Javier would, in all likelyhood, not even speak English to each other at all. TJR further states in her Cut interview: "I am very bad at languages and can read Spanish but cannot speak it. I am very fortunate in that I have a Spanish-speaking editor who took a lot of time and helped me through it, specifically through Argentine Spanish."
Taylor. No one forced you to make these characters Argentine. You did that all on your own.

I cannot believe that the author felt knowledgable enough to write about the experiences of a Latina in a sport such as tennis.

Because it's fucking tennis. Not soccer, not, idk, running, but tennis. AKA, one of the most elitist and whitest sports in all the world. So here's where things get really dicey.
Carolina Soto's story is not her own. In a Vanity Fair article about TJR, it says this: "When it comes to women’s tennis, of course, one name looms above the rest. Reid inhaled Serena Williams’s books, her father Richard Williams’s book (Black and White: The Way I See It), and Serena’s MasterClass. “I watched that thing three times. It’s watching her play: the way she describes it, the terms that she uses, what she focuses on, the way she trains, her attitude about all of it—and her attitude about excellence. [Carrie Soto Is Back] doesn’t exist without that MasterClass.”"

Oh, it is clear. I read that particular article after I read the book, but holy shit, the similarities between Carrie Soto and Serena and Venus Williams are too many to be coincidential. The whole "reporters asking her to smile and her telling them off" thing is recreated almost word for word. When I read that part in the book, I actually said "no way" out loud, because no way did the editors let her get away with that? There's a fine line between inspiration and blatant copying, and I fear it has been crossed in this case.

So. Getting all of this out of the way because I'm running out of space: The book isn't even good. An estimated 70% is extremely repetitive and boring. I can only read so many accounts of tennis games and the same training session over and over. The first part, titled "The first time around" is basically just Carrie saying: I won that game, and then I won that game, and then the mean reporters were being mean to me, and then I won that game, and then the mean reporters were being mean to me AGAIN, and then I won that game ..."
The only interesting part to me was the relationship between Bowe (what kind of a name is that, btw?) and Carrie, because it actually furthered Carrie's character development. Same with her relationship with Nikki, because she actually had to think about her actions for a second instead of just pouting and stomping her foot like a toddler, saying "But I want to be the BEST, Dad! You don't understand!!!"

The ending felt rushed, the twist that was supposed the be the tearjerker of this book was so obvious it was almost ridiculous, and the characters felt flat and one-dimensional, most of all Carrie herself. What a disappointment. The writing wasn't even good! I saw someone on Tiktok basically say, "shame about the racism, because TJR's writing is exceptional and so unique!" It is not. It is the epitome of white mediocrity. The writing is not bad. But it is by far not unique. It is nothing special. I cannot believe people are raving about this the way they are.

To close this out, once again: White writers should write diverse characters, but they shouldn't write solely about characters of color. These are not our stories to tell. And ultimately, nothing would have been taken away from this story had Carrie and Javier been white. Nothing would have been different. Carrie's issues with popularity and the press are not because of her heritage. It still would've worked exactly the same had Carrie been white. And ultimately, that's not what the reality should reflect, and if Taylor Jenkins Reid really wanted to accurately and meaninfully portray the experiences of a woman of color in tennis, she failed. Plain and simple.

Interview in the Cut: https://www.thecut.com/2022/08/taylor-jenkins-reid-carrie-soto-is-back-booktok.html
Vanity Fair Article: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/taylor-jenkins-reid-daisy-jones-evelyn-hugo-carrie-soto

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