We Loved to Run: A Novel

by Stephanie Reents Narrated by Jesse Vilinsky

Overview

A fearless debut novel about a women's cross country team and how far girls will push themselves to control their bodies, friendships, and futures

“This novel is a wild, brave run through the dark, and the ending might stir you to tears.”-Eric Puchner, New York Times bestselling author of Dream State

We loved running because it was who we were, who we'd been in high school, who we hoped to be in futures we couldn't yet imagine. Strong and fast. Fast and strong.

At Frost, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, the runners on the women's cross country team have their sights set on the 1992 New England Division Three Championships and will push themselves through every punishing workout and skipped meal to achieve their goal. But Kristin, the team's star, is hiding a secret about what happened over the summer, and her unpredictable behavior jeopardizes the girls' chance to win. Team Captain Danielle is convinced she can restore Kristin's confidence, even if it means burying her own past. As the final meet approaches, Kristin, Danielle, and the rest of the girls must transcend their individual circumstances and run the race as a team.

Told from the perspective of the six fastest team members, We Loved to Run deftly illuminates the intensity of female friendship and desire and the nearly impossible standards young women sometimes set for themselves. With startling honesty and boundless empathy, Stephanie Reents reveals how girls-even those in competition-find ways to love one another and turn feelings of powerlessness into shared strength and self-determination.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Reents has written a new kind of campus novel: a funny, inventive, warmhearted portrait of a college cross country team that begins as an insightful exploration of human competitiveness and becomes a moving ode to surviving trauma through female friendship and collective action. This novel is a wild, brave run through the dark, and the ending might stir you to tears.”—Eric Puchner, New York Times bestselling author of Dream State

“Pulled tense with all the beauty, strength, and desperation of youth, We Loved to Run is a stunner of a novel. This book is muscles in motion and hearts spilled out. It’s a tribute to what the body can do, what it suffers, and how it survives.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

“We Loved to Run is smart, funny, compelling, important, and, best of all maybe, different from other campus novels and other sports novels and other coming-of-age novels, though it is all of those. Stephanie Reents has written the rarest of debuts: one that ensures you’ll read everything else she ever writes. I really, really, really loved this novel.”—Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is

“We Loved to Run jumps out of the gates and doesn’t let up, not even for a second—it’s blistering, it’s unputdownable. With razor-sharp wit, compassion, and knowing insight, Reents interrogates identity, sacrifice, friendship, the marriage between pleasure and pain, and the pressure cooker of college sports, of the desire for greatness, of the price we pay for our ambition.”—Marisa Crane, author of A Sharp Endless Need

“A propulsive read . . . The six teammates at the heart of this novel, and the torturous, rapturous experience of racing together, are made vivid through Stephanie Reents’s exquisite prose.”—Leah Hager Cohen, author of Strangers and Cousins

“I was moved and captivated by this elite crew of complicated, intense, altogether real college athletes. You will love We Loved to Run.”—Daphne Kalotay, author of The Archivists

“I couldn’t stop reading We Loved to Run. A poet of speed, a chronicler of exhilaration, Stephanie Reents reminds us that why we run, and what we run from, ultimately matter less than what, or whom, we choose to run to.”—Andrew Altschul, author of The Gringa

“A cross-country veteran herself, Reents brings suspense and precision to the running scenes, putting the reader in the center of the action . . . the heroism of women with a common cause, in a world of men who think they know best, makes for a moving narrative.”—Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

2025-05-29
Six young women, competitive cross-country runners, strain to keep their lives on track.

On a Massachusetts college campus in 1992, there are no cheerleaders for the women’s cross-country team. The student-athletes have each other, and they are classic teammates: yoked frenemies and diehard loyalists. A collective narrator takes inventory of the top six: “Chloe is the fastest, and Kristin is the prettiest, and Liv has a boyfriend, and Harriet is the smartest, the most ambitious, and Patricia sees through the bullshit, and Danielle cares the most. She is the most responsible.” (Harriet is also a lesbian, and her subplot is worthy of its own book.) All crave food—unsurprising since the coaches do regular weigh-ins—and both disordered eating and binge-drinking plague the team. Reents focuses on the characters’ personal and athletic pain, so we don’t know much about their classes or career plans. But the runners, who are sharp and clever, take spirited positions on sexual politics, slippery language, Anita Hill, and Andrea Dworkin. Over scenic practice runs and social breaks, subsets of the six try to solve each other’s problems, with mixed results. Given this tight focus, we rarely glimpse coaches, parents, professors, or non-jock friends. Team captain Danielle is mostly on her own as she tries to steer her teammates toward top performance, good moods, and low drama. Of course, she too is a college student with pressures, and carries her own regrets. The story is told in three parts, two during the season and one as a flashback to Kristin’s previous summer in Boise, where she worked as a barista and met a suspiciously charming man in his late 20s. Here, Reents’ writing ramps up, and the stakes are high. Her descriptions of the Idaho landscape are bewitching, and the dialogue is rivetingly strange. A cross-country veteran herself, Reents brings suspense and precision to the running scenes, putting the reader in the center of the action. The novel’s resolution is anticlimactic, but the heroism of women with a common cause, in a world of men who think they know best, makes for a moving narrative.

A candid portrait of athletes’ endurance and women’s friendships.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940194411047
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged