Stephanie Sullivan: Review

TITLE: Atmosphere

RATING: ★★★

RELEASE DATE: June 3rd, 2025

Summary (from Goodreads): 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 easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted 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, everything changes in an instant.

REVIEW: I usually adore everything by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but I have to admit that it was difficult getting through this one. The plot was interesting, and I enjoyed learning more about the space program, but the storyline dragged quite a bit and was often boring. It took me a couple of weeks to read Atmosphere, whereas it usually takes me only a couple of days to finish Taylor's books. Most of the story is made up of the main character, Joan, struggling with and coming to terms with her sexuality, which I didn't have a problem with, but I did feel like it took up too much of the story. I would've loved more action involving the space program. Overall, I would still recommend Atmosphere, but I wouldn't recommend it over Taylor's other books, like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or Malibu Rising.

(DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this title from NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own).