Name: Atmosphere
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Publisher: Penguin
Format: Kindle
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, LGBTQ+
🌶️: None
😭: Yep, once the tears start they see you through to the end of the book!
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
Review:
I think I was put off by Atmosphere originally by the cover – I know they say don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but I do, often! Even if I’m trying not too… But I just don’t like covers that have people on them! Especially if they look like real people rather than drawerings or art… So when I saw this cover, this one pulled me in… plus that little “A Love Story” on a book not sold to me as a romance had me intrigued!
Still took me a while to get to it though, and I’ll be honest when the whole reason I was itching to pick it up this time round was down to the fact that I’ve seen multiple people read it this year and love it (not only it but various TJR books have cropped up this year!!) and I wanted to finally know what this was about.
I wasn’t prepared for how heavy on the NASA this book was going to be – I just knew it was a story that involved space. I really didn’t know much else – again, “A Love Story” left a lot of questions, but people sob to this story so I wasn’t expecting a typical HEA Romance… I wasn’t expecting what I got though.
Joan was unapologetically into space and I loved that she shared that with her niece! But what was even cooler was that throughout the story we follow both the present story (which is still in the past, but you know what I mean!) and also Joan’s journey from application to her ending up in Mission Control for the space mission that she’s running CAPCOM (oh god I hope I got that right!). And I really enjoyed this way of almost splitting the story!! Because each time we got to a bit of the present story that was supposed to emotionally hit the reader, it was enabled to be so by the information we’d find out before from Joan’s own journey.
It was slow, yes, I’ll admit it, but once you reach the last few chapters of this I challenge you to keep your eyes dry because everything you’ve been working towards hits you and it’s impossible at that point to not care so deeply for these characters. I mean, so deeply to the point that “Hi.” has ruined me and I think will forever bring me back to that moment in this story…
I couldn’t give this less than 5 stars for the way it made me feel because despite the slow pacing I understand why it’s that way. I understand that the pacing grows with the story, with the events that are taking place, and in all the right moments the pacing is perfect. It is just a slow start, and I don’t fault the story for that. Taylor Jenkins Reid successfully made me fall in love with multiple characters, made me sob, and then sob again over the word Hi. I loved this story.
“Hi.”
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