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Craving more ruthless ambition, elite-sports suspense, and fight for a champion's legacy after Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid? The Favorites by Layne Fargo awaits.

Curated by NextBookAfter Editors. This read-alike match weighs tone, themes, pacing, character dynamics, and emotional payoff rather than genre alone. See how recommendations are chosen.

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Why It's Your Next Read

  • Carrie's unapologetic hunger trades baseline grit for rink spectacle
  • Javier's intimate coaching bond becomes a combustible skating partnership
  • Tournament suspense stretches into a scandal-soaked Olympic career
  • Gendered scrutiny returns through headlines, judges, and rivals
  • Choose this for more romance, obsession, and operatic betrayal
The Favorites Cover
★★★★☆ 4.02 • Goodreads

Genre

Subgenres

Tags

  • Elite Figure Skating
  • Female Ambition
  • Obsessive Partnership
  • Olympic Competition
  • Public Scandal
  • Rivalry and Legacy
  • Difficult Women
  • Documentary Storytelling

If Carrie Soto's self-belief thrilled you precisely because it edged into arrogance, Kat Shaw will feel instantly legible. She claws her way from patched costumes to elite ice dancing with Heath Rocha, the childhood partner who is also her refuge, rival, and most dangerous weakness. Every lift and score carries the same charge as Reid's tennis points: athletic precision is never separate from pride, fear, or the need to prove that greatness belongs to her.

The same female greatness, now sharpened into blades, partnership, and scandal.

Fargo widens one comeback season into a decades-long, scandal-fed career and lets documentary voices fight Kat for control of her own legacy. The tradeoff is intentional: this is hotter, messier, and more romance-saturated than Carrie Soto Is Back. But it preserves the difficult heroine, competitive momentum, gendered spectacle, and terrifying question beneath the trophies—who are you when winning stops protecting you?

Carrie owns the baseline; Kat dares the whole rink to look away.

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What Readers Are Saying

"The messiness, the obsession (with each other & winning), the side characters that pushed them, the rivalries, (all of it honestly) was so well done!" — Sara Carrolli, Goodreads

What Readers Are Saying

"450 pages and I still didn’t want it to end!! All the stars. More coherent review to come 😅" — Sydney Books, Goodreads

What Readers Are Saying

"this was addicting, interesting, and immersive. it felt real and made me want to search hours worth of ice dancing videos on youtube." — chloé ✿, Goodreads

Awards & Recognition

2 wins · 2 shortlist/finalist · 9 other honors

  • Alex Award 2026 Winner · Adult books with special appeal to teen readers Young Adult Library Services Association, American Library Association
  • AudioFile Earphones Award 2025 Winner · Fiction audiobook AudioFile
  • Audie Awards 2026 Finalist · Fiction Audio Publishers Association
  • The Lolly 2025 Finalist · Contemporary fiction Book of the Month
  • Goodreads Choice Awards 2025 Nominee · Readers' Favorite Romance Goodreads
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Two more ways to follow the feeling

Go Deeper—or Sideways

Cover of The Second Season by Emily Adrian

Under the Radar

The Second Season

by Emily Adrian

Midlife Ambition Takes the Mic

Former Georgetown basketball star Ruth Devon, whose playing career ended with a knee injury, has reinvented herself as an NBA radio commentator and now wants the national television job her ex-husband is leaving. While she reports from the NBA Finals, an unexpected discovery forces her to weigh career ambition against motherhood and the family life she has already built .

  • Carrie's midlife ambition moves courtside—and behind the microphone
  • Javier's family intimacy becomes a mother-daughter reckoning
  • Match suspense returns through a taut NBA Finals frame
  • Choose this for workplace sexism over athlete comeback
Buy this book
Cover of Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Wildcard Pick

Chain-Gang All-Stars

by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Champions Fight for Their Bodies

In a warped present-day America, incarcerated people fight televised death matches for the chance to win freedom, and the circuit's two most successful gladiators are teammates and lovers Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker. With Thurwar only a few matches from release, the corporate system protecting its ratings places mounting obstacles in her path as she tries to preserve her fellow fighters' humanity.

Why it’s a wildcard: A kaleidoscopic dystopian prison novel full of gladiatorial violence initially seems far removed from a polished 1990s tennis comeback, yet its moment-to-moment pressures recreate Carrie Soto's most gripping reader experience at a harsher frequency.

  • Carrie's champion body becomes the system's televised property
  • Her record chase becomes Thurwar's deadly freedom countdown
  • Bowe's restrained intimacy intensifies into teammates-and-lovers devotion
  • Choose this for speculative brutality over tennis realism
Buy this book

What to read after Carrie Soto Is Back

Readers searching for adult books like or similar to Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid usually want adult women's fiction with qualities like elite figure skating, female ambition, obsessive partnership, and olympic competition.

If your search is specifically for books similar to Carrie Soto Is Back for adults, this match keeps the grown-up stakes, voice, and reader payoff central rather than drifting into younger or purely genre-adjacent suggestions.

If you like Carrie Soto Is Back and want to know what to read next, start with The Favorites. It is the closest NextBookAfter match for readers who want a book like Carrie Soto Is Back with the same core appeal.

The Favorites is a similar next read for fans of Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid because it shares elite figure skating, female ambition, obsessive partnership, and olympic competition while moving through sports fiction and romance.

Books like or similar to Carrie Soto Is Back: quick answers

What should I read after Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid?
Start with The Favorites. It is a close NextBookAfter match for readers who want adult women's fiction with a similar mood, pace, and emotional payoff. It is especially useful if you want elite figure skating, female ambition, and obsessive partnership.
If I like Carrie Soto Is Back, what should I read next?
Read The Favorites next if you want another adult women's fiction pick with overlapping tone, themes, pacing, and reader payoff.
What is a book like Carrie Soto Is Back for adults?
The Favorites is the closest adult readalike here because it preserves the core appeal readers usually want after Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
What are good books similar to Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid for adults?
For adult women's fiction readers, The Favorites is a strong book similar to Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid because it keeps the same read-alike appeal while moving through sports fiction and romance.
Is The Favorites similar to Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid?
Yes. The Favorites is recommended here because it carries readers from Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid into sports fiction and romance while preserving the core read-alike appeal.
Why recommend The Favorites for fans of Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid?
The recommendation is based on overlapping appeal signals: tone, themes, character dynamics, pacing, and the specific payoff readers look for after Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

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