REVIEW: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

OUR REVIEW:

I freaking LOVED! this book. LOVED IT. I somehow got lucky enough to snag it through my local library before anyone else did and I inhaled it. Could not stop reading it. You could tell that TJR really researched all of the details of the novel and it seemed like she really loved Joan and her counterparts. I loved Joan. Her journey from dreaming about the stars to being among them and then help leading others in their journey through the stars was fascinating and wonderful and gripping. Equally powerful was her story of finding love in a way she'd never imagined or suspected--both with her niece, with her work, and with her lover. 

Cannot recommend this novel highly enough. I would love to see it made into a film. 

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SYNOPSIS:

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.