Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid Published by Doubleday Canada on June 3, 2025
Genres: Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Sagas, Fiction / Women
Pages: 352
Format: eBook
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*AN INSTANT #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program, about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. She is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, easygoing even when the stakes are high; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As they become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love–this time among the stars.
I came to read this book completely on accident. I’m, for the first time after many years of I’m going to, actually doing the Pop Sugar 2026 Challenge. One of the prompts is a book about women astronauts (prompt 5) and I was super excited. If you know me in real life you know that I enjoy meteorology and astronomy. But you also know that I’m super bad at math and some science so they were always just interests. I did join the Pop Sugar Facebook group and this book was mentioned several times so off to Libby I went to find it and put a hold because like a 7 week wait. It was popular but then out of no where I got a random Skip the Line pass and took it.
And this is where I struggle. I really wanted to love this book, like this book, and while I did like it I didn’t love it. There was great character development, great world building but something was missing for me. It’s almost like it went really fast in the slow lane. The years slipped by in the program while seeming to drag out the story. In some ways the forbidden romance (I mean at this time being gay was not kosher in everyday life much less in a public life so I get the secrecy) shadowed out the space story. And then the space story overshadowed the romance. While there was a balance to the book between the two the two lines never actually came together but almost existed separately as a distraction and didn’t feel holistic.
Overall, the great development and the sheer research that made the space book feel authentic won me over. While yes, forbidden romance, there was just great relationship development with the entire cast from Joan’s family to the class of ASCANs that bonded together. I do feel that the work that went into relationship development helped to make all that happened in space be more impactful to the realism of the risks. The time that the author invested into research shined through making it more realistic and made me more invested as a reader. Overall, while I didn’t love this book I really did like it.
About Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of the New York Times Bestselling novels Atmosphere, Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones and The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, as well as One True Loves, Maybe in Another Life, After I Do, and Forever, Interrupted. Her books have been chosen by Reese’s Book Club, Read with Jenna, GMA Book Club, Indie Next, Best of Amazon, and Book of the Month. Her novel, Daisy Jones and The Six, is now a limited series on Amazon Prime. She lives in Los Angeles.
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