The Players We Were
Academy Girls
Drama roils around interpersonal relationships and tennis-adjacent issues in the sensationalist novel The Players We Were.
Janelle Gabay’s intriguing enemies-to-friends novel The Players We Were centers interpersonal drama at a Florida tennis academy.
Seventeen-year-old Alex, a scholarship student, avoids distractions including drugs and romantic involvement with her best friend Tommy, whom she has feelings for. When she is paired for doubles play with Madison, a privileged but troubled player with a checkered past, it’s both a source of frustration and an opportunity: Madison’s father is willing to bankroll Alex’s trips to faraway competitions in hopes that she will be a positive influence on his daughter. Indeed, Alex has always seen tennis as a means to an end. If she succeeds, she will be able to go to university and help her single mother and disabled sister.
Tennis itself is well attended to. Each chapter begins by defining a tennis term that complements the ensuing scenes. A few matches are also rendered in clear detail. Even so, the book’s drama is most about personal relationships and tennis-adjacent issues, such as trying to attract the interest of university talent scouts.
The short chapters volley between Madison’s and Alex’s points of view, but their development is uneven. All of Alex’s motivations are clear and complex, whereas Madison proves inscrutable, competing at a national level with no clear-cut goals or passion. The complications she experiences as a biracial girl are also minimized by the fact that this detail about her is not disclosed until a third of the way through the story.
Indeed, many determinative factors in the girls’ lives are concealed for too long, compromising narrative continuity. There are hints of family secrets for both, and Madison’s drug-dealing past is revealed at a slow pace. Some developments are also jarring and underdeveloped, including a tragic death and the tension-inducing fact that the girls on the tennis circuit use incriminating photographs and knowledge of one another for blackmail.
While people’s conversations assume natural cadences, their voices often sound alike, leading to some blurring. Misspelled words, awkward diction, and malapropisms further distract from the book’s progression. Still, the book’s mean-girl dynamics, scandalous backstories concerning drugs and sex, romantic entanglements, and high-stakes matches carry some interest through to its satisfying resolution.
A dishy novel about sports and interpersonal teenage dramas, The Players We Were centers two girls on the competitive youth tennis circuit.
Reviewed by
Suzanne Kamata
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
