The book was well written. It provided changing POVs, and made it seem like the team of female cross-country runners was a cohesive perspective. Still, I was confused if the main character was the team and the point was to show the ebbs and flows of running as a team or if the main characters were the individual women runners. If so, none of the women stood out and I didn’t find any of them compelling or likable.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Every high school girl needs to read this novel. It's a common experience for most young women, and the fact that these exceptional young athletes faced the same traumas is heartbreaking yet motivating.

We Loved to Run was a glimpse into how women can hold each other together, tear each other down, and how we hold on to things we blame ourselves for, even when we are not at fault. The themes in this book play out through the lives of a group of college runners.

I received a copy for review. All opinions are my own. It was very interesting to learn about each girls individual life struggles and see how they all would have to come together at the end. The character development was really great and helped make the book easy to follow. I love that it takes place in the 90s because it made me feel a bit nostalgic and as a runner myself I was really excited to read this novel. Definitely a good weekend read!

A strong 3, middle of the road book for me. There were a lot of characters, and the shifting POV made it hard to learn them all. There were elements of the prose that were not in a style I personally enjoy reading, but ultimately I think it was a well-told story. Strong trigger warning, and if discussions of sexual assault are upsetting to you, definitely steer clear. Because I could see where the story was going, I read a lot of the book with unease.

I had a hard time getting into this book. However about halfway through, I finally understood the plot. Young women in a cross country team, dealing with sexual assault and how society treats them. Some good writing but I found it hard to engage.

We Loved to Run explores coming of age through the lives of six collegiate runners. The issues that the girls face are very realistic and dealt with in a way that felt very accurate to the early 1990s timeline. Much of it made me feel nostalgic but also sad remembering the pain of navigating those spaces. The story is told in vignettes from the six girls but there is a bit of imbalance as some carry more weight than others. Overall I enjoyed it, but parts of it were a little slow. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

We loved to run captured me in the first sentence. It brought me into the cross country team that this book follows and I felt like I was running beside them, Stephanie Reents captures perfectly captures the experience of women athletes. Reent takes us into the heads of each of these women as they navigate all the mind boggling messaging of society- we see the importance of team of sports (and the friendships they foster). Reents does a great job of showing and never telling- This novel is important and is a must read. I loved and look forward to more books by Stephanie Reents.

We Loved to Run by Stephanie Reents was a quick, though not light, read. The book follows the six fastest members of the women's cross country team of a fictional New England college (Frost) throughout their season. The narrative switches each chapter to a different narrator though each reads as if they are omniscient, and they each spend a lot of time thinking about and speculating or observing what the other women in that core six are doing during the chapter's events as well. As the weeks pass, the team continues to excel in workouts and in races in what could potentially be their best season as a team yet. The novel asks whether they will be hold it together, keeping their injuries, their anxieties, and their insecurities at bay to make it to the national competition. We Loved to Run captured the nuance and intricacies of female friendships and the love-hate relationship that many competitive athletes have with their sport and their bodies as a consequence.

As a former women's cross country team runner, I was excited to see a novel centered on a women's cross country team. There are not many! And I thought Reents delivered on some of these elements I remember most fondly: cross country season in the crisp New England fall, the weird relationship between the men's and women's cross country team, the love hate relationship to running that every runner has, and the nuance of female friendships. The book also does not shy away from some of the darker elements of competitive running like running through injury and pain and the rampant disordered eating culture, the latter perpetuated in We Love to Run by pretty much every member of the team as well as the coaching staff. Despite the heaviness, I felt Reents wrote about these details in a compassionate and realistic way that resonated with me. I loved the way she characterized and noted a lot of these small details.

Some of the other details were a little harder for me to follow. I did not feel like I knew any of the six girls well, as each is mainly characterized almost entirely by her compulsions and what place she landed each week in the workout. As a runner, these details were meaningful and interesting to me but I foresee the book losing a lot of readers because there is little detail about the runners outside of their relationship to running. Additionally, the women were also really kind of mean to each other. I've run competitively and I have never harbored some of these types of thoughts about my teammates. I don't remember these kinds of fights breaking out amongst my teammates. Though the plot is building up to their most important meet of the season, I would say it is mainly a character driven novel and I did not care a ton about any of the characters because I did not felt like I knew them outside of running and they were kind of mean! The narration style compounded this, sometimes as a singular we, other times in the voice of a single character which further blurred the lines. I think the intended function of this was to show they moved and thought as a group, and were constantly in tune with what was going on with one another, which resonated with me as a former athlete. However, their actions were very much at odds with their inner thoughts.

Other reviews have made mention that this book made them remember 'exactly why they did not get involved in competitive sports'. This makes me sad, because I feel like the very fact that Reents is still reflecting on her time as a collegiate athlete is /because/ she remembers it, her teammates, and the love they shared, so fondly. But I feel like the other reviewers' negative sentiment speaks to the fact that the meanness at times outweighs the kindheartedness in the book, and that although the characters come together by the end in a genuinely touching scene, it is hard to overlook all the cruelty along the way.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, Hogarth Books, and Stephanie Reents for an honest review in exchange for a free e-ARC.

Reents does a great job of capturing the feelings of anxiety and excitement that comes from a cross country workout.
I ultimately decided not to finish the book at the 20% mark. I was unsure where the story was going and wasn’t connected to any of the characters to care enough to find out.

We Loved to Run is about a college track team. The Poets, at Frost liberal arts college in New England, is comprised of a group of fast women. These women share the highs and lows, alternately loving and competing against each other.

The story is mostly told in the “we,” which took a little getting used to. There are some chapters that focus more on a single woman, and those are told in the third person. In those in between chapters, the reader learns more about Kristin and Danielle. We get bits and pieces about all of them, but we know Kristin and Danielle best.

Fortunately, I think a lot has changed in track and field and most colleges don’t treat their female athletes this way anymore. At Frost, we hear about the weigh-ins, the body fat percentage measurements, the starvation, and the brutal workouts with not enough recovery in between. We read about running with a stress fracture. Running hung over. Running angry and fiercely, and still… how much these young women love running.

We Loved to Run goes deep on eating disorders and sexual assault. This book is heavy reading, but beautifully written. I thought Stephanie Reents described the human condition so well, particularly that of young women who hate their bodies and, at times, themselves.

If you love running, there’s a lot to connect to in this book. And if care about young women, there’s a lot to be sad about in this book. Overall, I really enjoyed it. Recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Some favorite passages:
“We spent so much time trying not to think about our bodies that we were always thinking about them. Thinking about how they were not hungry or not injured or not fatter or weaker than the body of some other girl.“

“We shared tampons, the treats our moms sent us, clean socks, joy and shame and deodorant. We were friends like that.”

“We all rolled our eyes internally, and yet when we got going like this, it was a landslide, one girl’s self-criticism setting off another’s, a foot of unstable ground becoming two, then five, then fourteen, rushing down the slope, burying everything beautiful and living in its path. Suddenly, everyone was sucking in their stomachs, eyeing their thighs. Too much here. And here. Not enough there. Oh my god, it was disgusting. Squeezing whatever we could. Pinching. Breasts, bellies, buttocks. If there had been a mirror, it would have been worse. In this mood, it was traumatic to see yourself. It was like looking through the wrong end of binoculars.”

“While Eli was trying out something he actually might want to do someday, she was earning $3.25 an hour as a barista at Boise’s first espresso shop. This is one of the differences between being raised in a fully staffed family versus a single- mom situation.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t her body, per se, that she was so afraid of him seeing, but rather her relationship to her body, which he would see emblazoned across her face.”

“This is the thing that novice runners fail to appreciate: something is always hurting. If Danielle let discomfort—or, worse, real pain—stop her, then she would never run a step. The trick is knowing when you have crossed an invisible line between uncomfortable and serious, between something-to-be-tolerated and something-which-requires-professional-care and worse: rest.”

This is a highly relatable book, especially for young women who are figuring out how to compete in the world. Reents focuses on a small, elite, collegiate team of runners, who are eager to prove themselves -- as a team and as individuals. Their sport requires an intense focus on their weight and leads these competitors to concerns about body image. Each runner is constantly pursuing the competitive edge -- socially and while running. They compare themselves to their peers and struggle to maintain friendships and team cohesion as they seek individual success. A good read!

I didn't actually finish this book. I stopped about 20% in. For me, it was way too. much information about running and not enough character development. I wanted to see more of the girls' lives outside of running. I may pick it back up in the hopes that eventually it gets better.. Thank you very much to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Six female cross country college athletes, working through the mental and physical struggles that come with wanting to excel athletically while balancing the emotional experiences of life at that age. The book mostly focuses on two of the women, Kristin and Danielle, and as a result the book felt very unbalanced. We learn very little about Patricia, Liv and Chloe and often they seemed like an afterthought. It was a fine book but not one I could quickly and easily recommend to any reader.

I don’t normally read these sort of books. But it sounded so intriguing I had to pick it up, and I’m glad I did!

Throughout this story we see a track team’s lives. We see what goes on behind closed doors, the things they struggle with, how they feel, etc. I loved getting to see their lives and the friendships and how they support each other.

Unique take on the typical struggles we forget about when we transition from girls to women. I enjoyed the different points of view and personalities while confronting the same issues. I loved the real take on each characters competitive drive and reasons they all had for their love of running. A bit hard to follow but still fun being a fly on the wall if you’ve never been through some of these challenges.

Thank you for this ARC via NetGalley!

3/5

Stephanie Reents’ We Loved to Run isn’t just a novel about racing — it’s about the quiet, bruising battles young women fight every day, often alone. Set in 1992 at Frost, a fictional liberal arts college tucked in the woods of Massachusetts, this debut zeroes in on six members of a women's cross country team as they push themselves toward the New England Division III Championships — and past the edges of who they thought they were.

Told through shifting points of view, the story peels back each runner’s inner life — the drive for perfection, the hunger (literal and metaphorical), the isolation, the unspoken rivalries, the unexpected kinship. The novel explores eating disorders and sexual assault not as plot devices, but as raw, lived realities that shape and shadow the characters’ journeys. Reents writes with clear-eyed empathy, refusing to soften the hard truths while still holding space for moments of connection and resilience.

At times, the alternating perspectives blur — a few voices start to echo each other — but the emotional weight of the story never fades. What lingers is the aching beauty of these young women: ambitious, flawed, desperate to be seen and terrified of being truly known. We Loved to Run is a piercing look at the lives of student-athletes, yes — but more than that, it’s about the cost of excellence, the fragility of identity, and the quiet courage it takes just to keep going. For fans of character-driven fiction that digs deep and doesn’t flinch.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the ARC!

We Loved to Run by Stephanie Reents is a coming-of-age college novel that is, actually, all about running. So much so, if you don’t want to read about running, this may not be the book for you. It’s Danielle’s senior year at Frost, a small but prestigious liberal arts college in Massachusetts, and as the captain of the cross country team, she will do everything in her power to win New England’s this year. The book POV rotates from Danielle through the other top runners on the team, with some odd chorus-like “we” sections thrown in. As the season progresses, we learn about the women’s fears and adversities — both on and off the course. We Loved to Run explores themes of sexual assault, female friendship, love, and of course, running.

I understood the underlying point of We Loved to Run, but the story in general gave me whiplash. To start with, it reminded me of why I never had interest in competitive sports. It also reminded me of the dynamics of my sorority house when I was in college, and how when women were dealing with traumatic things they were just as likely to do to something that hurt someone else than they were to seek help in understanding the issue they were coping with. The book is about six women on a cross-country team, despite there being more women on the team that we never hear about, just the six best runners. The book is about six women, but it is mostly about two women, Kristin and Danielle, that have gone through traumatic experiences, with the other four popping in and out of orbit as secondary characters. The first and third part of the book are about a cross country season, where Kristin deals with her trauma by swinging between being uber-competitive and dropping off the grid. Danielle deals with hers by swinging between being the mother hen captain of the group and being black out drunk. It's probably fair to say that all of them have an unhealthy relationship with food, where they tend to eat hardly anything, a habit that is encouraged by at least their assistant coach. The second part of the book is one long chapter about what happened to Kristin the summer before the season. It gives the reader a sense of what she is dealing with, but feels incredibly bizarre, and the length of the chapter is so disproportionate to the others that it feels like the reader is reader a different book, before being dumped unceremoniously back into the one they were reading. It doesn't ever really feel like you know if Kristin and Danielle have come out the other side, the book ends with a moment that feels like it is supposed to be an opportunity to do so, but like the rest of the book it just feels like another moment where college students are doing something for the grand idea of it, and then are easily distracted by the next thing that comes along. This just felt all over the place. I wanted to know more about what the other women were coping with, but upon figuring out that wasn't really going to happen, I just really wanted it to be over with.

Thanks to NetGalley for this book. I really enjoyed this book that examines life in college in the early 1990s from the perspective of female athletes. An intense look at life way before the “me-too” movement and emotional at times.