Carrie Soto Is Back: A Novel

Carrie Soto has lived her life for tennis. Her father was an Argentine tennis pro and her mother died when she was young. She has grown up around tennis. She is ruthless and known as the "battleaxe". She just wants to win, regardless of what people think of her.  In her career, she won more championships than anyone else in history. She started to fall and retired in her young 30s. A few years later, after another tennis player tied her record, she decided to come back. 

The book is fiction, but feels like it could have been a sports memoir. References to fictional (Daisy Jones and the Six) and actual (Inner Game of Tennis) are intertwined. You almost feel you could look up Carrie Soto on Wikipedia.

Carrie struggles with the mental part of tennis. She has difficulty losing. She is not well liked by others. Nobody on the women's tour will practice with her. She ends up practicing with an older player on the men's tournament. They had a brief fling in their youth. It is clear that he will end up being a love interest in the story, even though it is a struggle for her.

Carrie started out with her father as a coach. She rose to prominence with him coaching. Then she chose a new coach for her peak years (and decline.) For the comeback, it was her father again. The story is as much about her relationships (with father, men and other tennis players) as it is about tennis. I rocketed through in one sitting. It shows plenty of growth in character and has a satisfying (if not expected) ending.

Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel

I admit that I missed the "A novel" portion of the title. I thought this was an oral history of a famous 70s band. I was going to go check Spotify to see if I could find the song. How could I have not known about their hits? I guess 70s era pop could easily have slipped through without me realizing it. Then as I went to Google, I discovered that it was really just a work of fiction. D'oh!

The novel provides an oral history of the Los Angeles band that went on to become Daisy Jones and the Six. Daisy Jones was a starlet born into an artistic family. She was addicted to everything and managed to eventually get a recording contract. The Six were a slightly more established band. They had gradually grown to some local acclaim. Eventually the two would record a song together and then go on toe merge their bands. They produced grammy award winning, chart topping songs. However, things fell apart. Substances and relationships took their toll. There were challenges of marriages while being on the road. There was also the inevitable conflict among two "leaders". The whole story was very much in the vein of other rock oral histories and done well enough to make it appear real.