What happens when the thing that makes you great is also the thing that makes you insufferable?
I was walking the lakefront with Denise last Saturday — one of those late spring Chicago mornings where the fog hasn't burned off the lake yet and the skyline looks like a watercolor someone left in the rain — and Carrie Soto was in my ears, being absolutely unbearable. And I mean that as a compliment. Denise asked me why I was smiling at nothing and I said, "This woman is the worst and I can't stop rooting for her." She nodded like she's heard this before. She has. (Denise has also heard me go on at length about When to Rob a Bank, which I reviewed last fall — a very different kind of book, but it produces the same phenomenon where I'm apparently smiling at my earbuds on public transit like a person who has lost the plot.)
The Unlikable Protagonist Problem (And Why Reid Gets Away With It)
Let's talk about what Taylor Jenkins Reid is really doing here. On the surface, this is a sports comeback novel — thirty-seven-year-old tennis legend comes out of retirement to reclaim her Grand Slam record from a younger, hungrier Nicki Chan. But underneath that, it's an interrogation of what we demand from women who refuse to be likable. Carrie is prickly, self-centered, dismissive. She doesn't soften for the reader. Reid doesn't give you the standard redemption arc where Carrie learns to be nice and then wins. Instead, Carrie learns — slowly, grudgingly — that accepting help isn't weakness, and even that lesson comes with thorns.
The father-daughter relationship between Carrie and Javier is the beating heart of this book. Javier, her coach and dad, is one of those characters who could've been a stock "supportive parent" figure but instead feels like a real man — stubborn in his own way, carrying his own grief about his wife's death, pouring everything into tennis because it's the language he and Carrie share. When that relationship hits the notes it's meant to hit late in the book, you feel it even if the sports stuff doesn't interest you.
Now. The Bowe Huntley romance. It's fine. It's competent. It's also the least interesting thread in the book, which is a problem because Reid gives it significant real estate. If you loved Los siete maridos de Evelyn Hugo, you might find Carrie's love story comparatively thin — Evelyn's romantic entanglements were the engine of that book, while here the romance feels more like a subplot Reid felt obligated to include.
Paula Jiménez and the Challenge of Carrying Carrie
Here's where I have to be honest: I'm working with the Spanish-language narration by Paula Jiménez, and the research on her specific performance is sparse. What I can tell you is this — the English version features a full cast with sports broadcast segments that apparently sound like actual ESPN coverage, which is a genuinely clever production choice for a sports novel. The Spanish version with Jiménez is a single-narrator affair, and that's a fundamentally different listening experience.
A single narrator carrying a character like Carrie for nine hours is a tightrope walk. Carrie's internal voice needs to convey competitiveness without becoming grating, vulnerability without undermining her edge. Some listeners in the English version complained about accent work — particularly British and Australian attempts that apparently went sideways. With a Spanish-language narration, those accent challenges take on different dimensions entirely. I'll say this: the prose deserves to be savored at 1.0x. Reid writes in short, declarative sentences during the match scenes — almost like play-by-play — and rushing through those kills the rhythm she's building.
(My students would hate this book, by the way. Not enough explosions. I love it. Well — I love about seventy percent of it.)
The Drag in the Middle Court
The pacing issue is real. Between Carrie's decision to come back and the final tournament push, there's a stretch — roughly hours four through six — where the training montage energy fades and the book becomes repetitive. Practice. Tournament. Carrie is rude to a reporter. Practice. Bowe says something charming. Carrie resists, then doesn't. This reminds me of what Hemingway said about writing — you have to kill your darlings. Reid could've killed a few more darlings in the middle act.
But when the final matches arrive, the tension genuinely works. Reid knows how to write competitive stakes even if you've never watched a tennis match in your life. She makes you understand what a backhand down the line means emotionally, not just technically.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
If you loved Los siete maridos de Evelyn Hugo, come in expecting a quieter, more internal version of Reid's fictional-biography formula. You'll get the same "this could be a real person" quality, though several readers noted it doesn't quite achieve the same illusion here. The sports setting either works for you or it doesn't — there's no getting around the fact that large portions of this book describe tennis matches in detail.
If you need constant momentum or you're listening while distracted — grading papers at 11 PM, say, hypothetically — this might lose you in the middle stretch. Skip it if you can't tolerate a protagonist who won't charm you, or if sports-heavy narrative makes your eyes glaze. It rewards focused attention, particularly during the match sequences where Reid's clipped prose mimics the back-and-forth of a rally.
Worth Pausing the Faculty Meeting For?
Almost. Not quite. This is good Taylor Jenkins Reid but not peak Taylor Jenkins Reid. The character work on Carrie and Javier is excellent, the romance is adequate, the pacing sags, and the single-narrator Spanish version lacks the production fireworks of the English full cast. But Carrie herself — difficult, driven, refusing to apologize for wanting to be the best — she's the kind of character we don't see enough of. Especially not women characters. Especially not women characters over thirty-five.
I'll keep thinking about her on my next lakefront walk. Right after I finish Middlemarch. Again.
