“We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.”
I've been waiting for this book for a long time and like all TJR books I wonder what I did that made me worthy enough to read the absolutely legendary and iconic story of Carrie Soto.
Carrie Soto is not a sweet woman. She is not nice and she is not loved by the world and she is not one to pull back her words. She wasn't skinny and she didn't smile enough and she didn't know how to open up her heart. In Fact she is not like most female leads the world has come to know and love. And I was here for it. I was here for it all.
“Luckily, I did not need to be pretty. My body was built to wage war.”
Personally, as a reader, THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO SEE. I want to see real, raw people and I want to see the truth about an imperfect person and not just what the world sees. I want to be inside their heads and I want to know every second of their story and I want to understand them.
“No matter how good I was on the court, I was never good enough for the public. It wasn’t enough to play nearly perfect tennis. I had to do that and also be charming. And that charm had to appear effortless.”
Carrie Soto was the realest of real people and she was STRONG and driven and ambitious and confident and so many things the world may see as flaws but that were embodied into something beautiful by this character.
“I suspected the problem was that I was always the winner. But I could not for the life of me understand why that made people want to play with me less instead of more.”
She didn’t win by being humble, she won by KNOWING she was going to win, by believing in herself. When the world was angry that she didn’t celebrate after her wins, and didn't appreciate them, she thought to herself that this was the outcome she expected.. Why should she pretend to be surprised by the crowd? She was cold and it was glorious. her father called her “achilles' '.. a warrior and that’s exactly what she was. We as readers dont see wins come to her effortlessly like the world does. We see her pick up the racket as a toddler and we see her turn into something fierce and unstoppable. We see her deserve what she gets.
“Next time, I want you to beat yourself. Every day you must beat the day before.”
There's something about the simplicity of this book that makes me want to turn TJR into a religion. I flew through it and at the end of it realized there was no crazy plot, no whirlwind romance, no twists and turns and rollercoasters. But it was beautiful. It was a journey and it was thrilling to watch her play the matches and watch her train sweat and blood and watch her rage and watch her love her father and watch her fall and fly and everything in between… It was so simple and yet so beautiful and I have to give it to Taylor for having the power to write something so impactful about something so fluid.
Lastly, the relationships. Not many, but a significant few. We get dynamics we didn’t even KNOW we needed. We get the rivals that end with respect, we get the father and the daughter, we get the agent and client, a subtle yet beautiful romance and most of all we get the relationship Carrie had with herself. We know her and we watch her get to know herself and we watch others help her get to know herself and open her heart up. We see everything from her flaws to her strengths and it’s so inspiring.
Anyways,
I need another book, TJR. now please.
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