The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Dorey-Stein, Beck. Spectacular Things. The Dial Press, Kindle Edition, 2025.

Liz Lowe is the lonely single child of two parents who spend more time working and in social engagements than they do with her. In fact, her mother often sees Liz’s youth as competition. When Liz’s immense skill at soccer is discovered at a summer camp, however, her parents see a way to gain accolades because of their daughter, and they pour everything into her soccer career even though they do not regularly attend her games. Liz works as hard as she can at the sport because she likes the attention of her parents. She earns a place on UCLA’s women’s soccer team. On a trip to the World Cup during her senior year of high school, however, Liz gets pregnant by her coach, Q, and she decides to keep the baby. She keeps the baby’s father a secret, and UCLA rescinds their offer. Her parents are purposefully out of the country when she gives birth and in the months afterward. She stays at the family home until her parents are about to return, and then she leaves to start her own life with her daughter, Mia, in Victory, Maine.

Liz gets a job quickly upon entering Victory, and she is allowed to bring Mia to work. Eventually she is able to purchase a house for them. She decides to start training toddler Mia in soccer, and they work daily at drills. Mia is quite talented just as her mother is. Q comes into town and rekindles a romance with Liz after telling her that he is leaving his wife. Mia loves having her father around, but one day he disappears, leaving Liz in a deep depression. Mia will assume for years that he just abandoned them, but eventually her mother tells her that she forced him to leave once she found out that he had been drinking heavily and even drove Mia around while drunk. She sent him away to protect Mia but not before she got pregnant again with another daughter she will nickname Cricket.

When Cricket gets old enough, Liz starts to train her alongside Mia. Mia is the responsible one in the family and at an early age takes on the responsibility of certain household management tasks like paying the bills because she is simply better at it than her mother is. Mia’s soccer career goes very well, and she makes a name for herself in the sport. One day, however, her mother tells her that making it to the highest ranks in the world of soccer takes a lot of money, and she will need to get another job to help her daughter make it that far. She can only afford to do this for one daughter, so she asks Mia to give up her own soccer career in order to manage the household while Liz gets a second job to help Cricket, who is more talented than Mia, advance her career. Mia agrees and takes over the household chores for her mother.

Cricket continues to gain notoriety in the world of soccer. She starts playing under a coach named Oliver who gives her a lot of personal attention. Mia goes away to college and tries to make a life for herself apart from her family. One day at work Mia gets a call that her mother died in a car accident. She leaves college immediately and permanently, and with the help of Oliver, calls Cricket out of a soccer game and gives her the news.

Oliver helps the two young women in the aftermath of Liz’s death, and he and Mia start to develop feelings for each other. Oliver tries to push the feelings away because he does not want any intimation of impropriety, but their relationship does not break any ethical guidelines, and they eventually start seeing each other. They will get married and attempt to have a baby while Cricket continues to advance her career. Cricket’s sole focus is on soccer, and this makes relationships hard for her, but she develops a friendship with fellow elite soccer player, Sloane. The two push each other to be better, but they also are jealous of each other. Eventually their jealousy and competition get between them and they break off their friendship.

During this time, Mia has managed to become pregnant after dealing with infertility, but she has a traumatic birth that leaves her in need of a kidney. Cricket is the only eligible donor, but to give a kidney would require Cricket to give up her soccer career. She goes a year without giving Mia and Oliver a decision, and the sisters are estranged during this time. Cricket is quite successful but realizes that she is alone and has no one to celebrate them with. When Mia collapses in the stands at one of Cricket’s games, Cricket realizes that she would rather have her sister than her career, and she agrees to give Mia the kidney. During this time, she reconciles and begins a romantic relationship with Sloane who she will help coach after Cricket heals from giving her kidney.