A review by davygibbs
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens

3.0

A smart, snappy novel that I enjoyed reading for the most part. But one not without some annoying tics and an occasionally grating narrator. One of those tics is the between-chapter interludes -- I guess narrated by a sportswriter we never really get to know? The geological metaphor was not doing it for me at all. Another was the abundance of cocksure generalizations, often regarding men and women. Nemens doesn't often give the former much credit, but then, she's hard on the latter, too. But you roll your eyes if you feel the need and you move on. I also felt like the ending was rushed -- with 20, 10 pages left, I couldn't imagine how she'd tie up all the loose ends, and, well, she didn't. She tied up two. And while that resolution was effective, and wrenching, it felt abrupt and incomplete. On the other hand, I picked the book up mainly because it's almost baseball season and I'm excited about that, and I wanted to read something that fed my excitement. As far as that goes, The Cactus League was a resounding success. The baseball-oriented perspective was a consistent highlight.

Update: Below, I read a user review suggesting that the individual stories making up the novel would've worked better as a collection of short stories, and I think that's spot-on.