Carrie Soto Is Back

US Open

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

Taylor Jenkins Reid is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter.

The books in Reid s famous women quartet stand alone. . . . But each of the books centers a vibrant protagonist managing the tensions between her glamorous life in the public eye and the pressures she feels in private . . . with Reid meticulously collecting minute yet meaningful details to help build immersive worlds Time

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.