Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me an advanced copy of Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein. This novel follows the lives of Mia and Cricket, two sisters who must determine what truly matters to them. The story emphasizes that, at times, your dreams or purpose in life may not be what you originally believed. While I enjoyed the novel, I found the pacing a bit slow in the middle.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC.

I love stories about complicated relationships between sisters. I love stories about complicated relationships between parents and their kids. This story had both and I was very invested in Mia and Cricket's story. The novel opened up with a suspenseful beginning with one sister giving birth and the other in the final moments of an important soccer game. But even after it rewound to the beginning, the tension didn't let up, even if it was in a "quieter" way. I just really liked following the two sisters and their mother, seeing how they got to where they were. They felt three-dimensional and even though lots of sad things happened to them, it never felt like trauma for the sake of trauma.

The reason I'm giving it four stars instead of five is because I wasn't a huge fan of the romantic relationships. Though the book tries its best to make it clear Oliver didn't get with Mia until she was of age, he did in fact know her when she was a minor I'm pretty sure. So the dynamic still feels off, especially since he swooped in when she was in a super emotional state following a traumatic event. Also, I am a bit over someone being gay used as a twist/reveal. I didn't know why Cricket couldn't have been out the entire book, rather than the reveal later on. She still could've not been interested in dating until college, but for me, this tiny "reveal" was unnecessary. And her relationship with Yaz came out of nowhere and moved so quickly. I had to reread the scene where Cricket saw Yaz giving a tour, wondering if this was some important person from the past i forgot about, because Cricket's reaction was a bit dramatic. I also saw the romance with Sloane coming and I wished they didn't have to be together. The whole: "It's her. It's always been her" made me sigh.

This book did a great job of being nuanced and complex, so I also felt like the ending was a bit too neat with an overly happy ending for my particular tastes. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot and would read more from the author.

Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein follows Liz Lowe and her daughters, Mia and Cricket. This novel is an ode to family with exploration of loss, grief and coming of age. It also revolves around the importance of fiercely chasing one’s dreams, no matter how big or small.

The first four chapters take place in 2028, then it jumps back to 1989 and flows from there chronologically. My only critique is that too much was revealed during those initial chapters and I would have preferred things to unravel more organically throughout the story.

I’d recommend this book to readers who like soccer/women’s sports, stories about sisterhood and character-driven narratives.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC, Spectacular Things is set for publication July 1, 2025.

Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey Stein was a book that pulled on my heart strings from the get go.

Coming from a family that dropped everything for their dreams to come true in high school, I could relate to Cricket and her sister Mia’s grit. Her mom worked two jobs, Mia grew up too fast, and Cricket chased the all-American soccer dream — this story had me from the very start. I really loved the characters in this book. They all made me laugh, want to bang my head against the wall, and everyone was realistic with flaws. The two sisters, their relationship, and rituals really kept me reading.

I also loved that this book took place in Maine, being a Maine local myself I knew what bridge they were talking about, and the schools mentioned. This book ended just the way I was hoping it would, and this book just kept on giving.

This book is written for the people who love reading about sports, sisters, and want a story line that just keeps giving.

Talk about a book that can make you consistently shift back and forth from warm, fuzzy feelings to cold, prickly frustration.

Spectacular Things follows the lives of two sisters and their young, single mother, each having many moments in their lives requiring them to pivot. Life definitely throws obstacles in along their journeys, some by choice and others unavoidable. It's no surprise that the story begins with the mother, Liz.

Mia is the oldest sister, easily described as supportive and dependable. She's the one that often puts everyone else's needs before her own. Cricket is the athletic, hyper focused soccer player that is destined for greatness. It's a powerful story of sibling bonds, mother/daughter relationships and chasing dreams. The characters definitely have their flaws, which can be frustrating at times, but overall really adds to the story. To give too much away is robbing the reader of this reading experience, so just trust me when I say it is a compelling family drama.

Thank you to The Dial Press for the advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. These opinions are entirely my own.

(Read if you like a book that centers around sport, is heavy on family drama, but highlights a strong sister relationship.)

This was a book that I wasn’t sure I would enjoy. I even put it aside and read something else before going back to finish the book. The story revolves around a single mom and her two daughters. Liz(mom) has high aspirations for one of her daughters to play professional soccer. Mia, the older sister starts out with all of Liz’s attention toward. Career in soccer, starting practice and drills at a young age. Then, along comes Cricket who seems to have more potential than her sister. So Cricket is now Liz’s main focus for a soccer career. As time passes, Mia has to put more and more on hold to help her sister reach her dreams. When Cricket reaches the top, Mia has a need that could cause Cricket’s soccer career to come crashing to a halt. Does Cricket have what it takes to step up for her sister, or will she deny Mia the one thing she has that Mia needs? I gave the book four stars because it seemed choppy with short chapters and so much going on.

“…the most beautiful people tend to be a little bit nuts.”

🏆This will easily score a place in my Top 10 Books Released in 2025.

👏🏻 The author’s bio mentions working at The White House & years spent as an English teacher. Bravo; I loved the mature writing style. With essentially 3 parts + an Epilogue, the style clearly starts in “present” - then flashes back one good and long time - and ends back in the present - then the epilogue for a cherry on top. It’s very concise and there is no confusion.

I consider myself a sports girly but primarily baseball, basketball, and football (even though I hate football. That’s another story.) This is a ⚽️SOCCER STORY— you don’t have to know anything about soccer to appreciate and follow along. Now if you LOVE SOCCER— this is seriously a must read for you.

Contemporary/Fiction :::

This book hit so many targets:
Slow burn romance
Age Gap
Complicated Family Relationships
Sister Bonding
Grief
Coming of Age
Illness/Health

There are some very major themes that erupt in Part 1 that are not really mentioned in the Goodreads summary so I am doing my best to omit any spoilers, but just know that there are even more themes that played a huge role in why I just love- love- loveddd this! Here’s why—

This felt like a book so many can relate to or at least have empathy about. Since I’m being careful not to include spoilers, I can give a very easy example— I don’t have any sisters, but who hasn’t imagined what it would be like?? I can’t exactly relate but I coulddd— I really could— just put myself in these shoes and had to pause for reflection— “wow, how would I handle this??” The challenges outlined in this novel are very real. Any of this could happen.

I really want to know what you think if you read this one!! I’ll also be looking out for her other novels: From the Corner of the Oval (2018) & Rock the Boat (2021)

💕 Special thanks to the author @beckdoreystein, @netgalley, & @thedialpress for this ARC.

🫶🏻 Anticipated Release::: 1Jul2025

#bookstagram #bookreview #ebook #eread #arc #netgalley #soccer #worldcup #olympics #sisters #newengland #california #ucla #slowburn #romance #book

Spectacular Things is a heartwarming story of two sisters, Mia and Cricket Lowe, and their mother, all who share a love for playing soccer. The story begins with Mia in the hospital, about to deliver her first baby amid the final women's Olympic soccer match, a team where Cricket is the backup goalkeeper. With 83 minutes played in the game, the impossible happens and Cricket is called into play when the starting goalkeeper suffers an injury. Cricket helps lead her team to victory and Olympic gold, all while Mia is delivering her baby girl. Then the impossible happens to Mia, when she is rushed into emergency surgery immediately after her delivery. When Cricket is finally able to return home to visit the baby, it is not to her childhood home, but to the hospital where Mia has been diagnosed with kidney failure and in need of a transplant. It is expected that Cricket will donate one of her kidneys, but that is not the case as Cricket is unable to grapple with the idea of giving up her rising career as one of the nation's elite women's professional soccer players. This leads to an estrangement between Cricket, Mia and her husband Oliver.

The story then flashes back a few decades to begin Liz's story. Liz is Mia and Cricket's mother, a once promising soccer star from a wealthy family who found herself pregnant at 18 with Mia. Liz's world is rocked as she is about to set out to UCLA on a soccer scholarship. We later find out that the father was Liz's married and much older soccer coach. Unwilling to terminate her pregnancy, Liz departs her family home and sets off to make it on her own, landing in the small town of Victory Maine, with baby Mia in tow. Liz starts training Mia at an early age and notices that she also has a natural talent for soccer. Her days revolve around working hard to pay the bills and training Mia to be elite.

One summer day, Mia's father remerges, a man going by the name of Q. Liz and Q make a quaint little family for Mia, only for Q to leave in the night with a parting gift-Liz is pregnant with her second daughter, Cricket. As the girls grow up, it becomes apparent that although Mia is a talented soccer player, Cricket has the natural gift and Liz asks Mia to make the difficult decision to quit soccer in order to become a second caregiver to Cricket as Liz works her two jobs. Mia turns her focus to her natural gift, academics and Cricket rises in the youth soccer world by being invited to be on am elite club team. This is where she meets Oliver, whom Cricket refers to as Coach, and begins being molded into a goalkeeper for the team.

The girls continue to thrive, Cricket winning championships for her soccer teams, and Mia winning an academic scholarship to Yale. All is good in the Lowe world, until tragedy strikes and Liz is killed in a car accident. Mia leaves Yale and becomes Cricket's caretaker at the age of 19, giving her dreams, and returning to Victory. Liz struggles to financially and emotionally support herself and Cricket, but gets by and Cricket is able to secure a full scholarship playing soccer for UCLA, all while hoping to make the Women's National Soccer League and play for the Oympics.

While Cricket is at UCLA, both her and Mia's world begin to expand and thrive. Mia becomes involved romantically with Oliver (Coach) and Cricket with another student, Yaz. Oliver and Mia marry, and at the end of Cricket's college career, she is drafted to play in Chicago for a professional soccer team. Cricket struggles with living alone in an unfamiliar city away from her girlfriend, and Mia suffers a tremendous loss when she miscarries during her first pregnancy, Throughout the strife, both girls are able to rise again, with Mia focusing on her marriage and Cricket making the National team and setting off for the Olympics.

The story ends by circling back to the beginning: Mia delivering her baby girl, named after her mother, only to be left with kidney failure, and Cricket unable to sacrifice her career to save her sister. Over the course of the next year Mia battles through dialysis to stay alive and Cricket reaps the benefits of her Olympic success. But how will it all end, will the girls mend their relationship? Will Mia receive the kidney transplant she needs? Will Cricket ever truly be happy just having soccer and nothing else in her life. A ,must read story for all!

Title: Spectacular Things
Author: Beck Dorey-Stein
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group-Random House/Dial Press
Genre: Family Drama
Pub Date: July 1, 2025
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Pages: 368

Mia and Cricket are both talented and well known in their small costal town in Maine. They are known as the “Lowe girls”. Both girls are academically gifted as well has good athletes. In fact, both girls as well as mom played soccer.
Mia is more academically gifted and Cricket is a natural athlete and wants to play professionally.

The story begins when Cricket is playing for the US Women's soccer Olympic team.
While at the same time Mia is giving birth and watching Cricket play from her hospital bed.
……….. A health emergency occurs.
Story then switches back many years when their mother Liz Lowe was a high school senior who had just signed and committed to play soccer for UCLA. However, Liz soon finds out that she is pregnant and becomes a mom and not a Bruin Women’s Soccer player.

My daughters as well as grand children were all into sports. Two played at the college level and my granddaughter now plays water polo professionally. SO I do ‘get’ loving a sport.

In this story, I learned a lot more about soccer however, more than I really wanted to know. But as I said – I do ‘get’ sports!

I did enjoy this story. One reader described it as ‘predictable. I thought Yes! Thank Heavens!
These girls went through such tough times- if it didn’t end up okay I would have thrown the book across the room!!

Want to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Random House/Dial Press for
this eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for July 1, 2025.

A quintessential contemporary fiction book. While this book ultimately wasn’t for me, the story was cute and will be perfect for a trip to the beach or pool this summer.

I’m always so interested to read stories about siblings especially sisters. As an only child, I find the dynamic fascinating. Loved this!

⚽I'll start with a big thank you to Beck Dorey-Stein, Random House, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read Spectacular Things in digital format. I will share my review to Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes &Noble upon release.

Release Date: July 01 2025

⚽Spectacular Things, at its heart, is a story about sisterhood, about girls bound together by family, vulnerability, and years. Soccer is not just a theme, but a whole character in this story. The family struggles with independence and loyalty, and the narrative is told through timeline jumps. Liz's own dashed dreams play a looming role in the sisters' childhoods. The effects are felt long after, when the legacy of their life becomes sacrifice and grief. I liked the training stories, showing the way that Liz's idiosyncrasies developed and formed into full-blown crises. If you appreciate a family drama and complicated, easily relatable characters, I think this will be your book.

⚽If you have a sister, you'll understand firsthand the pressures of protecting her, encouraging her, and letting her be herself. I definitely identified with the ways that being a sister becomes part of you, in a way. I thought the timeline jumps were an interesting way to tell the story, but I really found myself more interested in Liz's story just because of the nature of it. There were some moments that I felt dragged, but considering the shorter chapter lengths, I didn't struggle to finish. The major tonal drag for me was the heavy exposition which felt more memoir-esque. But overall, I thought it told a story that resonated with me in the ways that it meant to.

⚽You might like this book if you like Ann Napolitano, Claire Lombardo, Trancey Lange, Ann Patchett

Major Themes & Tropes:

⚽Soccer
👯Sisterhood
⏳Timeline jumps
♀️ Feminism/Women & Girls
💔 Grief, Loss
🏥 Medical Crisis
🏡 Family & Relationships
📖 Character-focused
🤰Unplanned Pregnancy/Motherhood

3.7 out of 5 stars, rounding up ✨

"A steady, ordinary life can be extraordinary so long as it's centered around family and community and filled with love."

"She is coming to understand that love and loss live on the same coin. It's never heads or tails but joy and agony, grief and delight, spinning in the air, waiting on time and luck to determine not when this chapter ends but how the next one begins."

This novel is fantastic! The writing is so good. The characters are well developed. I enjoyed every minute of this book and would highly recommend it.

Thank you, NetGalley and Dial Press for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book had me hooked in and I was heavily invested. I loved the storyline and really wanted to know the outcome of the book. I related to Mia’s character, but did find Cricket’s younger sibling selfishness quite infuriating (it was written so well though). A really powerful book on sibling bonds and dynamics.

This book is everything to me. It is the epitome of a wonderful, inspiring read. We follow two sisters, well, perhaps the line of Lowe women, throughout their lives.
Mia and Cricket are not quitters. And they are Lowe sisters. Mia is the older of the two. A caretaker and lover and incredibly smart human. Cricket is the younger sister. An athlete and dreamer and star soccer player.
How will they react when a sudden event changes everything? When Cricket is faced with the choice of her sister or her lifelong dream. When Mia is faced with taking her sister’s dream away in one rare moment. But above all, how dreams change.
How girls grow up, how sisters sacrifice for each other. How generational dreams and generational women are awe inspiring and powerful. Love in all its forms.
I fell in love with the authors writing style and how she laid the story out. We ‘start’ in the middle of the climax before backtracking through their lives. I was immediately captivated because I know the impossibility of the choice the girls are faced with. You can’t help but read to find out, and you fall in love with the Lowes while you’re there.

Thank you to The Dial Press for the free copy!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for the ARC of this book in exchange for a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

4 stars!

What a beautiful story of sisterhood. This novel follows Mia & Cricket through their lives, and their close relationship with their mother Liz who passes away unexpectedly. Liz was going to be a soccer star, until she had Mia, and she had to give up her career. Her love of soccer was passed down to her daughters, and Cricket quickly emerges as a soccer star, with Mia needing to support her sister.

This book deals with a lot of complicated emotions, and family relationships, but I felt it did so in a really meaningful way. I can emphasize with Mia, and needing to support Cricket in her dream of being a soccer star, even if that means setting her own goals aside.

The writing in this book reminded me of Taylor Jenkins Reid books like Malibu Rising. We really get insights into the sisters lives and all the complicated emotions that surround losing a parent too soon, while still working towards our dreams.

Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein is, at its heart, a sister story. There are other things going on but the sisters are the focus. This is a story of two sisters just getting through life and all the ups and downs it entails and I think this book will be something very special to a lot of people.

As someone who has a sister that is five years younger than me, this story really resonated. I really enjoyed how this book unfolded with the first few chapters being present day and then the time jump back to the mother’s life.

This book deals a lot with soccer as one of the sisters is a soccer player and I loved that story. I feel like it helped keep the momentum of the story moving. The chapters are also pretty short. I found myself saying “one more chapter” all the way until the end.

My only issue is that some parts felt a little rushed. These characters were so well fleshed out that when there was a chapter that seemed to go by too fast, I felt like I was missing out.

This was beautiful story. I feel like it discussed sisterly love in a realistic way. It also touches on other heavy subjects that I don’t want to spoil because they make the story so unique. I can see myself recommending this to a lot of readers.

Spectacular Things was indeed spectacular. Not to be corny but it really was just that. I don't usually read this genre but I'm so glad NetGalley gave me the opportunity to read this book. I do love reading about sister relationships as I have two lovely ones. These characters felt so real, they were complex. This story wasn't all rainbows and butterflies; there were sad moments. This put me on an emotional roller coaster, my emotions were all over the place. That's a testament of how well written this was. There were so many layers and executed so well. This was touching, this was heartbreaking, and this was indeed complicated. And I loved every second of it.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to thank Net Galley and Random House/Dial Publishing for the opportunity to read this book as an ARC. This book is the story of Liz Lowe and he two daughters, Mia and Cricket. Liz is in High School when the book opens, and she plays soccer. And she is very good. Scholarship to UCLA good. She goes to see the USA Womens Team win in 1999. She also gets pregnant. Her parents prtty much abandon her, she loses her scholarship and her dreams. She doesn't give up. She raises Mia ( and later Cricket) on her own, and teaches them to be strong soccer playing women. Mia is good, but Cricket is better. Soon, Mia is deferring her dreams to help Cricket. After tragedy strikes, Cricket and Mia have each other, and Cricket goes on to be a world class soccer player. But Mia has dreams too. This is a well written story about sisters, and love and family. I rounded up from a 4.5( the whole who is the girl's father storyline was a bit pat and cringey), but the characters were engaging , even when they weren't always likeable. Thanks again for the opportunity/

I really liked this book! In concept, it could have been confusing with the intertwining timelines and narratives, but it was executed really well. There were a couple times where I felt like things were rushed, such as Liz’s relationship with Q, but overall a really beautiful story.