At this point, I probably have to admit that Jenkins Reid’s historical novels have a distinct cheesiness about them, and that I enjoy it very much. Having first met Carrie in Malibu Rising in an unpleasant cameo, I knew she was going to be a wonderfully complex lead. And the author does an excellent job of not playing down her abrasive manner, but showing us how it came to be and how it changes over the course of her character arc.
We follow Carrie from her start in tennis, coached by her wonderful father Javier, through her initial career, her retirement, and her comeback for the 1995 season. Carrie’s both propelled and held captive by her ambition, and I enjoyed reading about how she came to broaden her concepts of success and failure. Her sometimes uneasy but always relationship with her father was a highlight of the novel, and I found her slowly budding romance with Bowe and friendship with Gwen and Nikki to all be really cute.
But, as said before, the story gets a little cheesy sometimes, and Carrie is not always the most pleasant person’s head to be inside, considering how she treats others around her. But mostly, I thought there was something off kilter about her character arc. I appreciated the place she ended up, but I wish we could have seen more of the intermediate points on her journey there, instead the handful of big leaps we get instead.