I purchased this book for my own personal collection.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: June 3, 2025
Summary:
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people 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, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and 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: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.
My thoughts:
I was fortunate enough to see TJR on tour for this book and purposely waited to read the book after going to see her. And I’m so glad I did. Hearing about the book and her process of writing the book – the research and all that went into the book – really gave me such a better perspective when I finally got around to reading it…and what a fantastic book it was. When I tell you I had tears streaming down my face for the last few chapters, I kid you not. This book had a hold on me like no other.
I was fully invested in this chapter right from the beginning, which really didn’t surprise me. TJR has such a way with creating characters that are so richly and emotionally real. I loved Joan from the first moment we meet her and was rooting for her all the way. This is why I loved historical fiction – I love to get lost in the stories but also I love to learn something and TJR does both her so well. She gives us a story depicting what life was like for a woman in a male-dominated field in the 1980s, having to have a “secret” love affair because it just needed to be that way and brought NASA to life in a way that was both informative and dare I say, enjoyable.
I didn’t think any TJR book would ever top The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but this has just tied it! Of course, I still have a few other of her books to read, and now I’m very excited to do so, but I think these two will remain my top favorites of hers.
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