Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a huge crowd pleaser of a novel. The equivalent of a summer blockbuster with a real, grounded heroine, this book feels so satisfying across the galaxy of emotions. Check out my Atmosphere review below!
Atmosphere review
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is the book of the summer. It just is. The competition is over. This book has been everywhere, it’s impossible to avoid. But for good reason. Whatever you think of TJR’s other work, this one is worth a try. I loved it and felt it was an early contender for my favorite book of the year. It will be hard to surpass.
The book focuses on Joan Goodwin, a physicist and astronomer who dreams of being an astronaut in the early 1980s. When NASA opens a new training program for astronauts, Joan applies and is accepted. She will have to compete against the other trainees for an opportunity to actually visit space. That includes the few other women selected for the program–Lydia, Donna, and Vanessa. But Joan is also working to help her sister raise her young daughter, which is an increasingly difficult relationship in Joan’s life. And Joan is also on a journey of self discovery as she puts her all into proving she’s the right person for the astronaut job. An unexpected romance complicates all of these things for Joan in her high stakes role.
The less shared about this book before you read is probably for the best–I went in fairly blind. It’s a captivating character study, and Joan feels extremely well explored throughout. While I was engaged with the romance, it was Joan’s relationship with her niece, Frances, and sister, Barbara, that I found to be the most memorable. The book explores female relationships in many forms, and this relationship is really unique and extremely strong. Frances grows increasingly lonely at home, and it’s Joan’s job to navigate her relationship with Frances as well as with her sister Barbara. Joan wanting to do what’s right for Frances continually puts her relationship with Barbara in jeopardy. It pushes Joan’s sense of what is right and wrong. And it’s the thing that grounds her journey at NASA and in this book.
Atmosphere also does a nice job of exploring the feminine role in the very masculine NASA. Lydia, another astronaut trainee, was of particular interest to me as she was someone who viewed the other women trainees as direct competition. She was not very well liked, but she felt she was viewing the situation in a realistic way. Joan, on the other hand, recognizes the team aspect of a space mission and leans into that. Both are right, both are wrong. This role was a particularly memorable and thought provoking element of the book.
The inner workings of NASA were really interesting to learn more about as well. If there’s one personal gripe with the book, I felt like it would have been helpful for Reid to offer a note at the beginning or end of the book that explains which parts are real and which are speculative fiction. I’m sure there will be readers who easily can see the speculative aspects of the book, but as someone with only cursory knowledge of this subject, I felt it would have been helpful.
Atmosphere was the kind of book that I rarely found myself keeping track of how far I had read–I just was going with it, surprised to see how quickly I was flipping pages. It’s a rewarding reading experience and feels like TJR firing on absolutely all cylinders. I’ve enjoyed all of her books, but the maturity of this book made me feel like it was my favorite of hers. The book is also extremely romantic both in its romantic relationships but also in the way the prose romanticizes the cosmos. Atmosphere is a huge crowd-pleaser of a novel, and left me just an emotional wreck in its final pages. I absolutely loved this one.
My Rating for Atmosphere
This was easily a 5 out of 5 stars (no pun intended).
Romance Recipe Pairing
Pair Atmosphere with my Banana Bread Baked Oatmeal Cups as an ode to Joan and Frances’ relationship. This is the kind of recipe that’s fun to make with kids and they’ll totally devour–a wonderful recipe for a great aunt like Joan to whip up with Frances.
Synopsis for Atmosphere
Synopsis (from Amazon)
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.
Buy your copy of Atmosphere here for Kindle.
