REVIEW: Atmosphere

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on June 11, 2026 • ( 0 )

About the Book

Title: Atmosphere

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Series: none

Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, LGBT

Pages: 337

Edition Read: Hardcover Library Book

Dates Read: February 23 – 28, 2026

Challenge: GoodReads Choice Award Challenge, Best Historical Fiction

Blurb: 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 easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted 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, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.

Review

I really need to read more of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s work. This is the second book of hers that I’ve read (the first was Daisy Jones & the Six) and I have absolutely loved both of them. In my quest to branch out to different genres, I’ve found I really like historical fiction, especially if its done really, really well (although reading something categorized as “historical fiction” that’s set in a time period I lived through . . . that hurt a little – jeez, I’m getting old). It also doesn’t hurt that I was really into space and astronauts as a kid. We lived a few hours away from Kennedy Space Center and I even got to go there on a school field trip once.

This book is told in two separate timelines – the mission in 1984 and then flashbacks to when Joan and her cohort join NASA. It was very interesting watching this first group of women entering this predominantly male field. As the team works together, they grow closer, especially Joan and Vanessa. Their relationship is very complicated, since they can’t be public with it due to their jobs, but it’s also really beautiful. Another relationship that was beautiful was Joan’s relationship with her niece. Since Joan never got married and had kids of her own, she was always close with Frances, but they get even closer when Frances’s mother leaves Frances with Joan to pursue her own life.

This book is vibrant, exciting, scary and heartwarming. I read the last third of the book in one sitting because I had to know what was going to happen. I understand completely how this won the GoodReads Award last year.

GoodReads rating: 5 stars