Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction (romance, LGBTQ+)
Pages: 352 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (TX, CA), outer space
Summary: 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.
Review: Taylor Jenkins Reid novels work well for me and this is my favorite so far. In the past I've read (links to my reviews: Carrie Soto is Back; Daisy Jones and the Six; and Malibu Rising). I really enjoyed this book.
This book is full of space and science, which is super interesting without being overwhelming. Reading about the training and jobs of the astronauts, what space feels like, etc was enjoyable and it's obvious that the author did her homework/research. And, the story takes place fro 1980 to 1984, my era of high school, so I felt very connected to the space work, ideas, and people that she writes about.
Yes, there is a love story, but it takes second place to Joan's life at NASA and her experiences as a woman in science, a single person, and someone who is highly intelligent and driven.
If you've enjoyed Taylor Jenkins Reid' other novels, you are sure to love this one. So far, it's my favorite of the ones I've read.
Challenges for which this counts:
- 20 Books of Summer
- Cover Love--Sunglasses
- Diversity--LGBTQ
No comments
Post a Comment