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23rd June 2025
04:59pm BST
Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of those authors you can always rely on.
She is the woman behind my favourite book of all time, Daisy Jones & The Six, so I had exceptionally high hopes for Atmosphere.
The novel is one of the most-anticipated books of the year so far, but does it live up to the hype?
An early copy of the novel arrived at my house a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't wait to get reading.
As unsure as I was to read something set in space, I was quickly captivated by the world TJR created.
The author never fails to pull the reader into a world we'd never imagine ourselves in, but her writing is so engrossing that you quickly feel like you've walked alongside the characters, despite them being fictional characters on a page.
The characters' development is what makes her novels so gripping. She lets her characters drive the story rather than the plot, and that's one of the most special things about her books. You quickly become engrossed in the characters' lives, their struggles, their heartache, and their milestones.
The characters in Atmosphere are some of Reid's best, especially Joan. She isn't the loudest person in the room, she hasn't got it all figured out, and she's often overlooked for being unmarried and child-free, but the reader soon realises how remarkable Joan is.
As wonderful as the character is alone, it's Joan's relationship with her niece Frances that really pulls on the reader's heartstrings. Anyone who knows what it's like to stand in and help raise a child, to be that mother-figure, and that pillar of support will empathise with Joan.
Their bond is also one that I found myself thinking about even when I wasn't reading the book.
However, the superior part of this story is Joan and Vanessa's relationship. Reid perfectly captured the haunting realities gay women faced in the 1980s, as well as keeping the magic of falling in love with the one for the first time.
Atmosphere is a story about drive, a story about space, but most importantly, it's a story about finding love even when you feel like all of the odds are against you.
Many fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid have praised her for writing yet another beautiful but realistic queer love story. Readers are saying Atmosphere is as good as The Seven Husbands of Evenlyn Hugo, which is high praise indeed.
'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 changed in an instant.'
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is out now.
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