A sequel to the unforgettable Election.
Even though this book was set in the present day, it still has that nostalgic feel to it. I was so happy to be reintroduced to Tracy at this stage of her life.

Tracy Flick is a single mom and an assistant principal at a New Jersey high school. She finds herself going through the motions every day, and not working up to her full potential…almost settling for her position in life. But everything changes with the announcement of Jack Weede’s retirement from his long-held position as principal. With this coveted position soon opening up, and the prospect of a promotion, she finds herself thrown back into her work, re-energized with the prospect of new challenges and responsibilities.
There was an abundant amount of things that she felt needed to be improved upon in the run-down school once she became principal, and a high school Hall of Fame wasn’t on that list. Yet Tracy finds herself enlisted to be a part of the selection committee for it(I feel the story picks up speed here, as the reader is introduced to some fun characters and subplots).
Bringing back painful memories of the past, this new Hall of Fame search serves as a reminder to her how quickly plans get blown off course and where she may be headed if she continues down her current path.
Peppering in a little bit of paranoia, regret, and sexism, these are just a few things Tracy experiences as she tries to determine who she is and what she has lost on the journey to rediscovering herself.

I adored this book and flew through it in a day. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a quick read.


ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Tom Perrotta gives us a fabulous sequel to his novel ELECTION. Tracy flick's life hasn't turned out at all the way she planned (and she had BIG plans). As she struggles with her job as an assistant high school principal, and her own self-esteem, Tracy reexamines her own high school experience. Viewed through her adult eyes, and the wake of the #METOO movement, she realizes that one of the most impactful relationship she had was not at all what she had believed it to be. As always, Perrotta gives us great characters and a compelling story.

Even if you have never read or seen Election, you'll get something moving out of Tracy Flick Can't Win. Despite the title, the novel doesn't only center around Tracy, who now is a middle aged assistant principle vying for the top job. Instead, like other of Tom Perrotta's novels, it focuses on a larger cast of characters who you don't entirely see how they all relate until the very end.

This novel is fast-paced, interesting, and at times heartbreaking. There isn't just right or wrong painted, but shades of grey for all of the characters and their actions. You do not have to like them, but the book challenges you to understand them and feel some empathy even if you don't like their actions. The person you feel the most for though is Tracy, who after a lifetime of trying and trying, she simply boils down to a person who no one quite likes enough to let win. This is especially apparent when she is part of a group who are selecting the first two people to be inducted into the high school hall of fame. She is to the world what the front desk lady is to the committee, fine but mostly there for optics.

It's somewhat sad to read about the women that are overlooked, from Tracy to Marissa to Diane to Alice, but you get the sense at the end that despite everything, they find peace. That's all that's really needed.

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love Tom Perrotta. I loved Election- but I will admit that it's not my favorite book by him and I did prefer the movie to the book, which is a rare thing for me. I just can't imagine it getting better than Reese as Tracy. I was excited to read this and see what my favorite little perfectionist is up to in middle age. It's also been about 5 years since Tom Perrotta's last book, so I was anxious to dive into his newest book. We learn that Tracy Flick is an adult now and the assistant principal at a local NJ high school. So she's still playing runner up and once the current principal announces his retirement, she becomes obsessed with getting what she believes is a much deserved promotion. Tracy thinks the job should easily be hers, but then a well known techie from the school board decides to create a high school hall of fame and the plot, as they say, thickens. Tracy plays the games and jumps on board with the hall of fame to please the board and ultimately get their votes to become principal. We follow a few members of the high school as they work to nominate the hall of fame members, leading to the eventful ceremony. This was one of the things I really enjoyed: the format of alternating first person perspectives from many of the characters directly involved in making the choices of new Principal and Hall of Fame inductees, we also got third person narratives about the candidates for the Hall of Fame such as a former football star allegedly suffering from CTE (I say allegedly because this can't be proven until after death), the school's longtime front desk secretary, and a former student turned policeman. I don't want to say much more except that I thought the ending was a little much, but overall, I really enjoyed hanging out with Tracy again. I also enjoyed the school setting and all the third person testimonials, Definitely recommend.

Perrotta’s new novel—a continuation of both Election’s style and one of its main characters, Tracey Flick—is an enthralling read by one of America’s great novelists. The passage and the consequences of time is central to the story, which is a darkly comedic look at the inextricable hold the past holds on the present, and perhaps the dangers of drudging it all back up.

Not too shabby….
Nope…..not too shabby at all!
haha!!
Very fast speedy fun read!

“Mom, Sophia said. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine honey”
[can’t you just hear Reese Witherspoon‘s voice?]
“I’m fine honey”.

A fan of Tom Perrotta and his distinctive style?
Enjoyed the book or movie, “Election”, with Reese Witherspoon playing the character role of Tracy Flick?….
Then ….
“Tracy Flick Can’t Win” …. the sequel to “Election”, should tickle your fancy.

The chapters are noticeably short with shifting - provocative character viewpoints….
but it’s our star-protagonist- Tracy Flick we are rooting for.

Tracy is determined to prove her worth to the students, faculty, and school board, while also managing her personal life—a ten-year-old daughter, a needy doctor boyfriend, and a burgeoning meditation practice. But nothing comes easy to Tracy Flick, no matter how diligent or qualified she happens to be…..

As an adult, a grown-up, an educator, Tracy Flint knew that what her drama teacher had done years ago was wrong.
In the privacy of her own heart, though, she couldn’t manage to hate him for it, or even judge him that harshly. There was a migraing factor at work, and extenuating circumstance”.
Tracy tells us that the circumstance with her. She wasn’t a normal high school girl. She was unusually smart and ambitious and way too mature for her own good.

“I never wanted to be famous, not really. It was more that fame was the necessary precondition for, and inevitable by-product of, the thing I really did want, which was to be the first woman President of the United States”.
“I know, there’s nothing more pathetic than a person talking about a dream that never happened, one that never even came close. It just makes you look like a fool. But being President wasn’t some girlish fantasy of mine, some cute little idea that dissolved at the first contact with reality”.
“Being President was my ambition not my dream”.
“There’s a difference”.

“You failed”.
“You did the best you could”.
“You failed”.
“You did the best you could”.
“Both those statements were true, and I excepted the mixed verdict. I was an adult; I had no choice. But I desperately wanted to go back in time, to find the girl I used to be and tell her how sorry I was for letting her down, that fierce young woman who never had a chance, the one who got crushed”.

Tracy Flick is more subdued this time around.
She has mellowed in middle age.
Setbacks are opportunities…
She was strong, smart, a fighter, and she believed in herself!
….[the perils of a well-determined woman].

Wonderful engaging comic novel….smart, funny, brutal and messy.

Reading Tom Perrotta is as delicious as Häagen-Dazs rum raisin ice cream!

I was SO excited to read this - and while I am glad I did and I did enjoy it - it didn't quite meet my high expectations. The ending especially disappointed me. I work in a school, so found it funny/sad how true it is that so many men get accolades, while the women actually do the work....! Enjoyable read, and had I not read election, probably would have enjoyed it more - but I set myself up with expectations.

Tracy Flick is back! 25 years later, she has gone from overachieving high school student to underachieving Assistant Principal at Green Meadow High -- underachieving in at least the sense that she did not realize her ambition to be President of the US, or even a lawyer.

And as was the case in her first turn in Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel Election (even better known as Reese Witherspoon's character in Alexander Payne's 1999 movie), Tracy Flick can't win -- as you can tell by the title. No matter how hard she tries -- and of course she always tries too hard -- she just can't win.

This time around, Tracy is the leading candidate to become GMHS's next Principal. To help her candidacy, she agrees to participate in a publicity stunt, the creation of a GMHS Hall of Fame along with a former graduate who has struck it big in tech and has come back to his old hometown as a big muckety muck.

Perrotta changes the format slightly -- while we still get alternating first person testimonial vignettes from many of the characters directly involved in making the choices of new Principal and Hall of Fame inductees, we also get third person narrative about the candidates for the Hall of Fame -- a former football star suffering from CTE, the school's longtime front desk secretary, and a former student turned policeman.

This is all good fun, as was Election, with relevant themes about contemporary suburban life, appropriately set in New Jersey, very snappily written by Perrotta -- a quick and entertaining read of the highest standard.

My only qualm is the way it ends with an externality -- having been totally driven by character to that point, the same ends could have been more satisfyingly achieved via character. Even though you could totally see it coming, I was still hoping that Tracy and Co. could work things out on their own, for better and/or worse, without having that happen.

But just a relatively minor quibble. Otherwise, loved it, happy to have had a chance to revisit a great character form the past. Can Reese Witherspoon reprise this role in a movie version?

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for kindly providing an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have never read or seen Election but I was familiar with the character to Tracy Flick and was interested to see where she'd be in middle age. This was a very quick and enjoyable read with memorable characters and shifting perspectives. Tom Perrotta does a great job at making the characters specific and memorable. I wished the book had been a little longer because I was having so much fun with them. Now I'm planning to check out Election and am looking back to see if there are any Perrotta books I've missed over the last few years!

According to an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tom Perrotta was writing a new book about high school and small-town politics when he worried he was just covering the same ground as ELECTION. But that didn't stop him--in fact, it gave him a hook for the novel. "I suddenly realized that the novel needed something else," he said. "I was basically summoning Tracy to help me write this book, because she was at the center of all these ideas."

This helps explain why Tracy Flick, last seen over twenty years ago in ELECTION, feels like an afterthought here. She's one of ten or so narrators. She should be the star here, but is constantly lost in the shuffle. There's a retiring principal and his secretary. A tech guru and his wife. A former football star. Multiple chapters are devoted to a pair of rather boring students (who barely interact with Tracy, and seem teleported in from an alternate book).

Once the plot gets rolling, it's a quick page-turner. I finished it in two sittings. The quick cuts between all of the various characters was at times jarring, especially since some are written in first person and some in third. If Perrotta had stuck to Tracy's point of view the entire time, I think it would have felt like a more satisfying read. Her name is right there in the title! In a storyline where Tracy is fighting to get her proper due, what does it say when even the author won't give her the time of day?

[Will post to Goodreads and other socials closer to release.]

A great follow up to Election, this book brings up to present day and shows us Tracy's determination to become principal after the current one retires

Election is one of my favorite novels. When I read the premise of this, Perotta's sequel to my beloved story, I was a bit dubious. Have no fear, though, Perotta does justice (maybe that's the wrong word) to Tracy Flick.

I think we collectively anticipated that Tracy would become a politician. She was so relentlessly driven, and our last glimpse of her in Election tells us she is an intern in Washington, D.C. In Tracy Flick Can't Win, she is a high school vice principal, vying for the top job. Perrotta aptly explains how she got there and, as one of my friends pointed out, that strikes a parallel of high-schooler Tracy in Election.

Like Election, Tracy Flick Can't Win is full of dark humor and twists, and one can't help but picture Reese Witherspoon as the adult Tracy, now a single mom trying to succeed in local school board politics. I can't wait to see that film.

If you are a fan of either the novel or the film Election, you must check out Tracy Flick Can't Win. You will definitely enjoy it, and you will hear that familiar war cry in your head by the end of the book.

Thank you #Netgalley for this advanced copy! As a fan of the book and movie, Election, this book did not disappoint. The boom follows a few characters but ultimately Tracy and her quest to advance from assistant principal to head principal at a local high school is the main plot line. The ending seemed a bit unbelievable but I won’t give any spoilers away. I enjoyed the book overall and how adult Tracy is still driven to strive for success.

Really enjoyed this, which is surprising because I was underwhelmed by Election. Tracy Flick feels realer when we meet her here, decades after the high school presidential campaign in which she eked out a win despite her teacher's machinations. She's not POTUS as she'd once planned, but a high school assistant principal looking to take over the head spot at the end of the school year. This novel uses the same multiple-POV structure as Election to show how Tracy navigates the new campaign she's waging and the various players that make it seemingly impossible for her to succeed.

In the last novel, Tracy seemed as much a plot device--an object for middle-aged men's fantasies and issues--as one of the story's protagonists. Here, she stands on her own, and while she's still not always likeable, she is sympathetic and understandable. I wanted to spend more time with her.

Quick read, well-paced (if a bit abrupt at the end), interesting characters. Highly recommend.

A delicious follow-up to Election. Super engaging, I read it in one sitting and didn't want it to end

Sheeeee's baaaack! Tracy Flick, the iconic character of novel and movie Election is back in a school setting - this time as a vice principal. As a person working in a school setting, I know the frustrating feelings of disrespect regarded to an assistant principal. As an AP, Tracy is hoping to be the new principal and she navigates the interview process while simultaneously serving on a committee for an unusual hall of fame project.

Tracy's life has taken a turn for the worst since we last saw her. I was a little sad reading the book. But I love Tom Perrotta and his observations on current culture and the complexity of people in general. This school and life satire will surely be enjoyable to anyone who loved the first book, or any Tom Perrotta book! #NetGalley #Scribner #TracyFlickCantWin

Glad to see Flick back. Many povs just like in Election with high school politics taking center stage. Highly engaging sequel.

Loved it! Great characters and very relatable. . Seems like a predictable story, but it isn't. I couldn't put it down and read in one day! I had been slogging through some very good books and disappointed I couldn't find anything original and captivating. This is it. I wish I could find another book like this soon.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Election is near the top of my favorite movies of all time. It's smart, funny, and so darkly comedic. Every high school has a Tracy Flick...the student who has something to prove because she came from nothing; the one who completes all the assignments in the syllabus weeks before they're due, the one who aggressively insinuates herself into every class discussion until everyone just gives up. Tracy was destined for greatness and headed to Georgetown until her mother's illness derailed those plans.

Tracy is now approaching middle age, and once again, she's resigned herself to second best, serving as assistant principal at a high school. I could picture Reece Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, and I was expecting the scheming and snark the original had. The story alternated among a plethora of characters, some so seconday and forgettable, I questioned their presence. The plot revolved around a Hall of Fame committee that was devoid of the scandal and juiciness I was expecting.

I enjoyed re-visiting this iconic and familiar character, and maybe age has just softened Tracy like the rest of us. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this early read.

To see a character again over twenty years later is a real treat, especially such a dynamic character like Tracy Flick. She was so realistic in this book, and I loved how the flashbacks and descriptions about her twenties got her to where she is today. With so many other characters in the book, they were all a little surface level for me. I really enjoyed the plot and thought it was a unique way to bring Tracy back to us, though.