Some books feel like stargazing with your heart wide open. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of those rare stories that pulls you in slowly, then lifts you off the ground completely. Set in the high-stakes world of NASA’s first class of women astronauts, this novel is about more than space. It is about ambition, quiet bravery, love, and the fierce joy of discovering who you are—even when the world tries to tell you otherwise.
Atmosphere Synopsis
Atmosphere follows Joan Goodwin, a quiet, brilliant astronomy professor who has always found comfort in the stars. She lives a life filled with equations, constellations, and quiet nights—until one day in 1980, an opportunity cracks her world wide open. NASA is recruiting its first class of women astronauts, and Joan suddenly wants more than just to study the universe. She wants to leave Earth and be in it.
What follows is a journey of courage, friendship, and transformation. At Houston’s Johnson Space Center, Joan trains with an unforgettable cast of characters: a charming Top Gun pilot, a no-nonsense mission specialist, a warm confidante with secrets of her own, and a magnetic engineer named Vanessa Ford who challenges everything Joan thought she knew about life and about herself.
As Joan learns how to navigate both space and emotion, she begins to discover a new kind of gravity. One that pulls her toward the people around her and the possibilities she never thought she deserved.
And then, in 1984, during a mission called STS-LR9, everything changes.
My Review
Atmosphere is not just a story about space. It is a story about women who reach for more, even when the world tells them to settle. It is about gravity—the kind that keeps us grounded and the kind that keeps us from becoming who we are meant to be.
The story begins as a slow burn, filled with technical detail and grounded in science. As it unfolds, what first seems like a story about astronauts quietly transforms into something deeper. It becomes a story about love in all its forms: romantic love, sisterhood, chosen family, and a lifelong devotion to the stars.
Joan Goodwin is a quiet force. She is a physics professor, an aunt, a stargazer, and a woman who finds her courage not in loud declarations, but in showing up fully in a world that keeps trying to shrink her. When NASA opens its doors to women in the early 1980s, Joan walks through, steady and focused, with a heart full of wonder and a mind made of steel.
And then there’s Vanessa Ford. She’s brilliant, untouchable, sharp as a blade. Her connection with Joan is gravity in a different form.
Taylor Jenkins Reid has always been a master of layered, unforgettable heroines, and this book gives us two of her best. But what truly sets Atmosphere apart is how it brings together ambition and intimacy. It shows what it means to carry both brilliance and heartbreak in the same breath. To chase your dream and still ache for home.
Atmosphere reminds us that bravery doesn’t always look loud. Sometimes it looks like showing up, doing the work, and daring to love anyway.
I closed the book with tears in my eyes and my heart somewhere near low orbit.
English (US) · 