Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-25% $13.48$13.48
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$11.92$11.92
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: saveherenow
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
Audible sample Sample
Carrie Soto Is Back: A Novel Paperback – June 6, 2023
Purchase options and add-ons
“A heart-filled novel about an iconic and persevering father and daughter.”—Time
“Gorgeous. The kind of sharp, smart, potent book you have to set aside every few pages just to catch your breath. I’ll take a piece of Carrie Soto forward with me in life and be a little better for it.”—Emily Henry, author of Book Lovers and Beach Read
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, PopSugar, Glamour, Reader’s Digest
Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.
But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.
At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe” anyway. Even if her body doesn’t move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.
In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells her most vulnerable, emotional story yet.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBallantine Books
- Publication dateJune 6, 2023
- Dimensions5.2 x 0.85 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100593158709
- ISBN-13978-0593158708
"Layla" by Colleen Hoover for $7.19
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
- We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.Highlighted by 1,617 Kindle readers
- Some men’s childhoods are permitted to last forever, but women are so often reminded that there is work to be done.Highlighted by 1,197 Kindle readers
- But I cannot hear anything as clearly as the sound of my own voice, begging me: Let this be enough.Highlighted by 624 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
---|---|---|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Carrie Soto [Is Back] . . . is like other sports novels in which underdogs punch, volley, bat and birdie their way to victory or additional defeat, but it goes beyond this to explore sexism and racism in the tennis world in the 1990s. . . . This novel will grab you. You’ll tear through blow-by-blow descriptions of championship matches on some of the most famous tennis courts in the world. . . .”—The Washington Post
“An epic story about bravery, endurance, but also the power of vulnerability.”—BuzzFeed
“Reid . . . draws on the lives of actual tennis pros (think Serena, Sharapova) to build a world of believable rivalries and intrigue infused with the whiplash suspense of a nail-biting tennis match.”—People (Book of the Week)
“Nearly every Taylor Jenkins Reid novel reads like a survey course in some flagrantly glamorous specialty and era. . . . Come for the King Richard–level attention to the art of the game; stay for the more personal soap operas unfolding off the court, and the final score.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest is set in the world of the tennis elite, following a ruthless former champion who—after losing her record to a rising star—decides to come out of retirement at 37 in order to reclaim her title. It’s seriously inspiring.”—Cosmopolitan
“Reid writes about the game with suspense, transforming a tennis match into a page-turner even for readers who don’t care about sports. . . . A compulsively readable look at female ambition.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Reid has written another knockout of a book.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“Reid captures the excitement of elite sports in her descriptions of Carrie’s games, as well as the struggle that women athletes face when their ambition and confidence is ‘too much.’ It’s another triumph for bestselling author Reid, and her growing number of fans . . . ”—Booklist (starred review)
“Another ace by Taylor Jenkins Reid, straight to the baseline! . . . An immersive delight.”—Emma Straub
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
September 1994
My entire life’s work rests on the outcome of this match.
My father, Javier, and I sit front row center at Flushing Meadows, the sidelines just out of reach. The linesmen stand with their arms behind their backs on either side of the court. Straight in front of us, the umpire presides over the crowd high in his chair. The ball girls crouch low, ready to sprint at a moment’s notice.
This is the third set. Nicki Chan took the first, and Ingrid Cortez squeaked out the second. This last one will determine the winner.
My father and I watch—along with the twenty thousand others in the stadium—as Nicki Chan approaches the baseline. She bends her knees and steadies herself. Then she rises onto her toes, tosses the ball in the air, and with a snap of her wrist sends a blistering serve at 126 miles per hour toward Ingrid Cortez’s backhand.
Cortez returns it with startling power. It falls just inside the line. Nicki isn’t able to get to it. Point Cortez.
I let my eyes close and exhale.
“Cuidado. The cameras are watching our reactions,” my father says through gritted teeth. He’s wearing one of his many panama hats, his curly silver hair creeping out the back.
“Dad, everyone’s watching our reactions.”
Nicki Chan has won two Slam titles this year already—the Australian Open and the French Open. If she wins this match, she’ll tie my lifetime record of twenty Grand Slam singles titles. I set that record back in 1987, when I won Wimbledon for the ninth time and established myself as the greatest tennis player of all time.
Nicki’s particular style of play—brash and loud, played almost exclusively from the baseline, with incredible violence to her serves and groundstrokes—has enabled her to dominate women’s tennis over the past five years. But when she was starting out on the WTA tour back in the late eighties, I found her to be an unremarkable opponent. Good on a clay court, perhaps, but I could beat her handily on her home turf of London.
Things changed after I retired in 1989. Nicki began racking up Slams at an alarming rate. Now she’s at my heels.
My jaw tenses as I watch her.
My father looks at me, his face placid. “I’m saying that the photographers are trying to get a shot of you looking angry, or rooting against her.”
I am wearing a black sleeveless shirt and jeans. A pair of tortoiseshell Oliver Peoples sunglasses. My hair is down. At almost thirty-seven, I look as good as I’ve ever looked, in my opinion. So let them take as many pictures as they want.
“What did I always tell you in junior championships?”
“Don’t let it show on your face.”
“Exacto, hija.”
Ingrid Cortez is a seventeen-year-old Spanish player who has surprised almost everyone with her quick ascent up the rankings. Her style is a bit like Nicki’s—powerful, loud—but she plays her angles more. She’s surprisingly emotional on the court. She hits a scorcher of an ace past Nicki and hollers with glee.
“You know, maybe it’s Cortez who’s going to stop her,” I say.
My father shakes his head. “Lo dudo.” He barely moves his lips when he talks, his eye consciously avoiding the camera. I have no doubt that tomorrow morning, my father will open the paper and scan the sports pages looking for his photo. He will smile to himself when he sees that he looks nothing short of handsome. Although he lost weight earlier this year from the rounds of chemo he endured, he is cancer-free now. His body has bounced back. His color looks good.
As the sun beats down on his face, I hand him a tube of sunscreen. He squints and shakes his head, as if it is an insult to us both.
“Cortez got one good one in,” my father says. “But Nicki saves her power for the third set.”
My pulse quickens. Nicki hits three winners in a row, takes the game. It’s now 3–3 in the third set.
My father looks at me, lowering his glasses so I can see his eyes. “Entonces, what are you going to do?” he asks.
I look away. “I don’t know.”
He puts his glasses back on and looks at the court, giving me a small nod. “Well, if you do nothing, that is what you are doing. Nothing.”
“Sí, papá, I got it.”
Nicki serves wide. Cortez runs and scrambles to catch it on the rise, but it flies into the net.
I look at my father. He wears a slight frown.
In the players’ box, Cortez’s coach is hunched over in his seat, his hands cupping his face.
Nicki doesn’t have a coach. She left her last one almost three years ago and has taken six Slams since then without anyone’s guidance.
My dad makes a lot of cracks about players who don’t have coaches. But with Nicki, he seems to withhold judgment.
Cortez is bent over, holding her hand down on her hips and trying to catch her breath. Nicki doesn’t let up. She fires off another serve across the court. Cortez takes off running but misses it.
Nicki smiles.
I know that smile. I’ve been here before.
On the next point, Nicki takes the game.
“Dammit,” I say at the changeover.
My father raises his eyebrows. “Cortez crumbles as soon as she doesn’t control the court. And Nicki knows it.”
“Nicki’s powerful,” I say. “But she’s also hugely adaptable. When you play her, you’re playing somebody who is adjusting on the fly, tailoring their game to your specific weakness.”
My father nods.
“Every player has a weak spot,” I say. “And Nicki is great at finding it.”
“Right.”
“So what’s hers?”
My father is now holding back a smile. He lifts his drink and takes a sip.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” my father says.
“I haven’t made a decision.”
“All right.”
Both players head back out onto the court.
“Nicki is just a tiny bit slow,” I say, watching her walk to the baseline. “She has a lot of power, but she’s not fast—not in her footwork or her shot selection. She’s not quite as quick as Cortez, even today. But especially not as quick as Moretti, Antonovich, even Perez.”
“Or you,” my father says. “There’s nobody on the tour right now who is as fast as you were. Not just with your feet, but with your head, también.”
I nod.
He continues. “I’m talking about getting into position, taking the ball out of the air early, taking the pace off so Nicki can’t hit it back with that power. Nobody on the tour is doing that. Not like you did.”
“I’d have to meet her power, though,” I tell him. “And somehow still maintain speed.”
“Which will not be easy.”
“Not at my age and not with my knee,” I say. “I don’t have the jumps I used to have.”
“Es verdad,” my father says. “It will take everything you have to give.”
“If I did it,” I say.
My father rolls his eyes but then swiftly paints another false smile on his face.
I laugh. “Honestly, who cares if they get a picture of you frowning?”
“I’m staying off your back,” my father says. “You stay off mine. ¿Lo entendés, hija?”
I laugh again. “Sí, lo entiendo, papá.”
Nicki takes the next game too. One more and it’s over. She’ll tie my record.
My temples begin to pound as I envision it all unfolding. Cortez is not going to stave off Nicki Chan, not today. And I’m stuck up here in the seats. I have to sit here and watch Nicki take away everything I’ve worked for.
“Who’s going to coach me?” I say. “You?”
My father does not look at me, but I can see his shoulders stiffen. He takes a breath, chooses his words.
“That’s for you to answer,” he finally says. “It’s not my choice to make.”
“So, what? I’m gonna call up Lars?”
“You are going to do whatever you want to do, pichona,” my father says. “That is how adulthood works.”
He is going to make me beg. And I deserve it.
Cortez is busting her ass to make the shots. But she’s tired. You can see it in the way her legs shake when she’s standing still. She nets a return. It’s now 30–love.
Motherf***er.
I look around at the crowd. People are leaning forward; some are tapping their fingers. Every one of them seems to be breathing a little faster. I can only imagine what the sportscasters are saying.
The spectators sitting around us are looking at my father and me out of the corner of their eyes, watching my reaction. I’m starting to feel caged.
“If I do it . . .” I say softly. “I want you to coach me. That’s what I’m saying, Dad.”
Product details
- Publisher : Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (June 6, 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0593158709
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593158708
- Item Weight : 10 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 0.85 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #94 in Family Saga Fiction
- #250 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #388 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, as well as One True Loves, Maybe in Another Life, After I Do, and Forever, Interrupted. Her newest novel, Malibu Rising, is out now. She lives in Los Angeles.
You can follow her on Instagram @tjenkinsreid.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Taylor Jenkins Reid has always crafted interesting characters and Carrie is no exception. A passionate and driven woman who takes a natural talent and practices it into perfection is someone you want to cheer for, however, as the reader, you can see disaster coming from Carrie cultivating her hard "Battle-Axe" persona. You want her to win and you want her to lose for the same reason - it's good for her. The romance with the Bowe Huntley character, and the relationship she has with her father/coach are both interesting and keep the pages turning. I was completely satisfied by the ending, and I will carry the character of Carrie with me, remembering all the lessons I learned from her.
I would recommend this book to any middle-aged woman like myself who doesn't want to think her best days are behind her.
In CARRIE SOTO, tennis is primary, but also the volley for TJR’s themes about the human condition. And Carrie Soto is so vivid, intense, and fully dimensional—known in the tennis world as the Battle Axe-- that she lived in my home and in my heart on every page. In fact, I even dreamt about her, she was that pressed into my literary soul. Carrie is single-minded, merciless when it comes to the court. Her unyielding nature, however, has its pitfalls; her personal life is the love you only get in tennis.
It's 1994, and Carrie is 37, retired for six years. Still single, she trusts nobody enough to get close to but her agent, Gwen, and her father, Javier, who raised her himself (her mother died when she was very young). In his home country of Argentina, Javier made quite a splash in tennis until he was injured. He turned to coaching his daughter. He started teaching her the game when she turned two.
Carrie is tightly coiled and at arm’s length from the rest of the human race. Her solitary life leaves little room for laughter. Soto was a ten-time Wimbledon champ and winner of more Slams than any other woman in history—until the new It-girl Nicki Chan surpasses Carrie’s Slam record in ‘94. Carrie decides to go back into the game to defend her record and show that she’s still the world’s best tennis player.
The novel gradually fills in the background time gaps so that the reader pieces together what makes Carrie tick. A tennis phenom, she was also a walking time bomb—I kept waiting for the inevitable explosion. I did learn intriguing tennis facts that I ate up despite my indifference to the sport itself. Reid has an exciting way of revealing the game without boring the reader. And the sport is also a metaphor for Carrie’s drive, her spirit, her priorities, and her sense of self and self-esteem. As the competitive drive consumes Carrie, it absorbed me, too. Her obsessive nature was in her DNA.
“I’m back at war, after years of not knowing how to live during peacetime. This is the only place where I make sense to myself.”
Tennis was all that Carrie lived for. Reid created a stark character that the reader, by turns, dares to understand and occasionally wants to tromp. Soto’s fanaticism is also what defines her, and binds her and inevitably can blind her. She guards her emotions and steers her life away from others. Training and competing means meeting the world at large—but on whose terms?
Do expect some untranslated Spanish—but these days we have google translate to make it easier, and it doesn’t distract, but rather adds to the novel. TJR is a genius in welcoming readers like me, who know squat about tennis but is captivated by the story of what it means to be human—flawed, expectant, hopeful, scared, and served with a beating heart. 4.5
No spoilers!!
I love to read this light easy read on the beach in Miami. I’ve recently moved from NYC, and actually am using duo lingo to learn Spanish now. I’ve also hit around on our tennis courts a few times since being here, and this book is fueling my fire to actually learn the game!
I love the familial conversational phrases in Spanish. It gives the book a tiny bit of a challenging edge. While you can use context clues to understand, recognizing some of the language is even better!
The book is a beautiful depiction of family, competition, and determination so far. It’s empowering, emotional and introspective.
Highly recommend!
Top reviews from other countries
Son père prend une grande place dans cette histoire, on voit au fil des pages à quel point ils sont unis et à quel point ce père qui endosse également le rôle de coach tente de tirer vers le haut sa fille avide de gloire et de succès. Leur relation m'a énormément touchée, c'était vraiment beau à voir.
C'est sans hésitations mon livre préférée de cette autrice, un parcours de femme comme je les aime, avec une pointe d'humour et de sarcasme pendant tout le long, ça été une excellente lecture.
Commenter J’apprécie