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A Love Story
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Book Reviewed by: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. 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.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.
December 29, 1984
Joan Goodwin gets to the Johnson Space Center well before nine, and Houston is already airless and muggy. Joan can feel the sweat collecting along her hairline as she walks across the campus to the Mission Control building. She knows it's the heat. But she also knows that's not all it is.
Her job today is one of her favorite parts of being an astronaut. She is CAPCOM on the Orion Flight Team for STS-LR9, the third flight of the shuttle Navigator.
The role of CAPCOM—the only person in Mission Control who speaks directly to the crew on the shuttle—is one of many that astronauts fill when they aren't on a mission.
This is something Joan often has to explain to people at the rare party she agrees to go to. That astronauts train to go up into space, yes. But they also help design the tools and experiments, test out food, prep the shuttle, educate students on what NASA can do, advocate for space travel in Washington, talk to the press, and more. It's an exhausting ...
What are you reading this week? (7/2/2025)
I'm currently in the middle of Atmosphere. I have enjoyed some of Taylor Jenkins Reid books however Atmosphere reveals a different writing style. Over the past weekend I read The Good Bright Wolf which inspired me to read Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. Both books dealt with the mindset of ...
-Lynne_G
What are you reading this week? (6/12/2025)
Finishing Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid for review, then I'm not sure. I've got a few days before I need to start the next discussion book - Broken Country - so I may try to squeeze in some...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (6/5/2025)
Like @Carla_D , I'm reading Before Dorothy for the discussion next week. Then it'll be on to Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid for review. In audiobook format, I'm still working my way through Stephanie Dray's Daughter of Cleopatra series. Next in the queue is Sam by Allegra...
-kim.kovacs
This week's time magazine cover is author Taylor Jenkins Reid!
Have only read one of her books, Carrie Soto is Back . I am looking forward to Atmosphere - have already pre-ordered it which I almost never do.
-Gabi_J
Atmosphere's plot follows Joan's professional and personal journey over the ensuing years, until the main storyline meets up with the currently unfolding emergency. We read about Joan's training as an astronaut and her first voyage into space, and we watch her transform from an awkward introvert into a confident woman and respected leader. Perhaps the core of the book, though, is how Joan learns that her desires—both her career ambitions and her romantic feelings, including realizing that she's gay and in love with a fellow astronaut—are legitimate and deserve to be embraced...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Andy Weir, author of The Martian
NASA? Space missions? The ʼ80s? This is a collection of all the things I love... . Great story, excellent research and accuracy, and a thrilling conclusion. Kristin Hannah, author of The Women
Thrilling...heartbreaking...uplifting...Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel, Atmosphere, is the fast-paced, emotionally charged story of one ambitious young woman finding both her voice and her passion as she fights to become one of the first female NASA astronauts in the 1980s. You'll barrel through this electric novel, rooting for the women to not only succeed in the space program but to soar. A pitch-perfect ending... . I loved it.
Joan Goodwin, the protagonist of Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel Atmosphere, applies to NASA to be one of America's first female astronauts and is accepted to the program as part of Group 9. Group 8 (both in the book and in reality) included Sally Ride, the first American woman to travel into space.
Sally Kristen Ride was born in 1951 in Encino, California. She graduated from Stanford University in 1973 with bachelor's degrees in both physics and English literature, and later earned a master's degree and Ph.D. in physics.
Ride's life changed in 1977, when she learned through an ad that NASA was recruiting women for their astronaut program. She applied and become one of only six women selected to join the class of trainees—the ...
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