Review of Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein

*Spectacular Things* by Beck Dorey-Stein (2025). Published by The Dial Press.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

Something that I’ve been trying to work my way through is my advance copy collection lately. As a blogger and content creator, I often get sent advance copies both digitally and physically. I tend to get auto approved for a lot of advance copies on NetGalley, which I sometimes take, but other times I’m tempted and feel like I need to get ahold of the book because it’s perfect for me.

That creates an even bigger backlog, but because my days are filled with applying to jobs and working on my side hustles and this blog, I have been trying to squeeze in more reading time than usual. I feel like my reading goals are usually larger because of this compared to the average person who has no time working a typical 9-5 and has a long commute.

The advanced copy I got to recently was Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein. I received this copy through NetGalley, and I was interested in it because of how its synopsis talked about the bonds between two sisters. I’ll have to admit: I thought the book was about something else entirely, but I still enjoyed reading it.

I spoiled a tiny bit of my thoughts there, so let’s get into the actual review! I don’t want to keep going on and on in the introduction. Much love to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy!

Two sisters, both in their teenager years and adulthood, have to make difficult decisions that could change their lives.

This is very much a novel about sisterhood and what it takes to let someone live out their dreams and best lives, even if it means sacrificing your own life for the sake of theirs. We see this first in the sisters’ mother, then how it manifests in their coming-of-age stories even though their mother tried as hard as possible not to let this happen.

We begin in the present day though, when the Women’s World Cup is on for football/soccer, and Mia, who is nine months pregnant, has to rush to the hospital in order to give birth to Oliver and her’s child. Mia is adamant about having the game unfold on the hospital screen, as her younger sister cricket is on the US Women’s National Team.

However, she’s not a starter, as her biggest rival from the beginning of her professional career is in the net. But as Mia starts to have contractions and struggle with her birth, the starting goalkeeper’s femur is snapped by a player on the opposite team in the last ten minutes of the game, forcing Cricket to go in the goal without a warmup.

What happens next will change her career forever, but first Mia is having complications from the birth of her child. She needs a kidney, and Cricket might be the only person who can give it to her. But if she gives up her kidney,

From that point onwards, we move into the past. We begin this portion of the novel with the story of their mother, who was a top soccer star and set to go to UCLA on a full ride scholarship. However, she has an affair with her high school’s soccer coach and gets pregnant, effectively ending her career and forcing her to flee north to Maine, where she’s going to start her life over again.

She has Mia in Maine, and then projects her soccer dreams onto her daughter. When the coach appears again, Cricket is conceived after a summer of passion. Cricket is someone who, straight out of the womb, was built to be an athlete, and the family only has money for one girl to play soccer. It’s going to be Cricket.

So begins the more direct forms of sacrifices Mia takes for Cricket, and we see how this is a novel about what we give up for the people we love. Tragedy is going to strike the Lowe family yet again, and even more tough decisions are going to be made in the near future.

Overall Thoughts

This is a simple book, but I found it to be striking and poignant with what it had to say. There’s a bit of an uneven relationship in terms of how much sacrifice these girls have given each other at first, but when the big question comes up on what to do next, it becomes abundantly clear where priorities lie, especially when Cricket’s entire life has been dedicated to soccer.

The writing and language in this novel is quite simplistic. It’s now flowery prose, but it does an excellent job of fleshing out these girls, their mother, and the world they’re living within. There are little moments here and there that make you feel like you’re peeking into an intimate moment in a family’s life, which might make you smile if you’ve experienced something similar.

I enjoyed this novel a lot in the end, although I don’t know if I’ll be returning to it any time soon. It was a good read in the moment, but it wasn’t my favorite thing I’ve read in a while. It’s actually a little bit outside my comfort zone even when it comes to the kinds of books I read, but it was a solid read overall.

Go pick it up if you’re interested in it from your local library or indie bookstore! You may find it very worth reading.

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