Books like Carrie Soto Is Back

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo follows a legendary actress who built her career on strategic marriages, public reinvention, and the kind of ruthless self-preservation that Carrie Soto would recognize in a heartbeat. Evelyn and Carrie share DNA as Reid characters: both women chose greatness over likability and paid for it in relationships they could never fully maintain. Reid structures both novels as retrospectives, letting an older woman look back on the choices that defined her life without sugarcoating any of them.

Where Carrie's arena is the tennis court, Evelyn's is the Hollywood studio system, but the internal math is the same. Every win costs something personal, and both women keep choosing to win. Reid's prose stays tight and controlled in both books, trusting readers to find the emotion in what characters do rather than what they say about their feelings.

If Carrie Soto made you rethink your definition of selfishness, Evelyn Hugo will push that rethinking even further.

Daisy Jones and The Six takes the same author's fascination with talent, ego, and the cost of public life and plants it inside a 1970s rock band. The oral-history format gives every band member a voice, and Reid uses contradictory testimonies to show how the same events look different depending on who is talking. Carrie Soto readers will recognize the central tension: a gifted woman operating in a space where her ambition is seen as threatening rather than admirable.

Daisy Jones faces the same double standard Carrie does, judged for behavior that would be called driven in a man. The Southern California setting and period details give both novels a specific, textured sense of place that grounds the emotional drama. Reid writes creative partnerships with the same precision she brings to athletic competition, treating both as arenas where people reveal who they really are under pressure.

This is the book to pick up if you want another Reid protagonist who refuses to play by the rules the world set for her.

Malibu Rising unfolds over a single night in 1983 as the four Riva siblings throw their annual party and decades of family secrets detonate. Reid connects Carrie Soto directly to this novel by making Mick Riva's family the backdrop, and readers who caught that crossover will want to see the full picture.

But even without the shared universe, Malibu Rising matches Carrie Soto's interest in what happens when a parent's legacy becomes a weight their children either carry or throw off. Nina Riva runs her father's household the way Carrie runs a match: through sheer force of will and the refusal to let anyone see her struggle.

Reid compresses time differently here, using a single party instead of a career arc, but the technique of revealing character through crisis stays constant. The sibling dynamics add a dimension that Carrie Soto's lone-wolf story does not have, making this a strong follow-up for readers who want Reid's voice applied to a larger cast.

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty centers on the Delaneys, a family built around a tennis academy, where the parents' retirement triggers a crisis that exposes every fault line in their relationships. The tennis setting makes this an obvious companion to Carrie Soto, but the real connection runs deeper. Moriarty writes about competitive families the way Reid writes about competitive individuals: she understands that the drive to win does not switch off when you leave the court.

Stan and Joy Delaney poured their identities into coaching, and without it, they cannot figure out who they are. That same identity crisis haunts Carrie during her comeback. Moriarty's tone is lighter and more satirical than Reid's, and she distributes the story across multiple family members, but both authors treat sport as a lens for examining ambition, aging, and the relationships we sacrifice for success.

The mystery element gives Apples Never Fall a different kind of momentum, but the emotional questions it asks will feel very familiar.

Open by Andre Agassi is the autobiography of a man who hated tennis and still became one of the greatest players in history. That contradiction sits at the heart of the book and gives it an emotional charge that most sports memoirs never approach. Carrie Soto would understand Agassi's relationship with the sport: the way it consumes your body, your schedule, your identity, and still refuses to let you go.

Agassi writes about comebacks, physical decline, and the loneliness of individual sport with a candor that matches Reid's refusal to glamorize athletic life. His descriptions of what it feels like to lose a step, to watch younger players do what you used to do better, land differently after reading Carrie's story. The book also functions as a portrait of a complicated father-child relationship, adding a layer that parallels Carrie's dynamic with her father and coach, Javier.

This is nonfiction, but it reads with the pacing and emotional intensity of Reid's fiction.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter stretches from 1960s Italy to modern Hollywood, tracking the long fallout of a brief encounter between a young Italian innkeeper and an American actress. The connection to Carrie Soto lies in how both novels treat time as an opponent. Walter's characters age, lose their looks, watch their dreams reshape into something smaller, and decide whether to keep reaching anyway.

The novel's structure mirrors the way memory actually works, jumping between eras and letting the reader assemble the full picture from fragments. Reid uses a more linear timeline for Carrie's story, but both authors understand that the distance between who we were and who we are now is the most interesting territory in fiction. Walter writes about the entertainment industry with the same insider knowledge Reid brings to professional tennis, and both books treat ambition as both a gift and a trap.

Readers who want a novel that covers decades without losing emotional specificity will find it here.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah follows a teenage girl whose family moves to Alaska in the 1970s, where the wilderness tests every relationship to its breaking point. The connection to Carrie Soto is not sports but survival: both novels center on women who must become harder and tougher than anyone expects in order to protect what matters to them.

Leni Allbright faces physical danger where Carrie faces professional extinction, but both characters draw on reserves of stubbornness that border on self-destruction. Hannah writes about the body in extreme conditions with the same attention Reid brings to Carrie's aching knees and taped wrists.

The father-daughter dynamic here echoes Carrie and Javier's relationship, with a parent whose intensity shapes the child in ways that are both strengthening and damaging. The 1970s setting gives the novel a period texture that Reid fans will appreciate, and Hannah's willingness to let her characters suffer real consequences puts her in the same weight class as Reid when it comes to emotional honesty.