Leah's Staff Pick
Published Date: June 3, 2025
Number of pages: 352 pages
Format: Physical book
Genre: Adult Fiction/Historical Fiction
Tags: Female Protagonist, LGBTQ+ friendly, Space, Space Exploration, Romance
Cardigan rating: 4 out of 5
Link to Goodreads Summary
Thoughts:
I think it’s official that if Taylor Jenkins Reid writes it, I will read it. Next in the lineup of timelines to explore after old Hollywood in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and the 70s rock scene in Daisy Jones and The Six, Reid takes us to the 1980s where NASA is beginning their largest space exploration program and the main character, Joan Goodwin, astronomer and scientist, is one of the first women to go to space.
This book had me hooked from the first chapter as we jump between two separate timelines. The present, in which a space shuttle has been badly damaged and members of the crew are already dead and the rest of them are struggling to return to Earth. And the second timeline, in which we get to know the crew members in the years before and follow them through their training at NASA and watch them become friends and eventually family. At the center of this novel, and what I appreciated most about it, was the exploration of what it means to be family and how that isn’t always the people biologically related to you. Joan’s character development and self discovery over the course of the novel was one of my favorite parts about reading this book as queer romance is explored and so are the implications of having to hide in a society and public-facing career where it could ruin these characters' lives.
A quote that stuck out to me that encapsulates the thirst these characters have to understand the constraints of the world around them is, “Language is what allows us to communicate. But it also limits what we can say, perhaps even how we feel. After all, how can we recognize a sentiment within ourselves that we have no word for? And perhaps, Joan thought, science is the same. Even the way we tell one another we want to live alongside them is limited by what we understand is possible in the world. What more could we say if we knew more about the universe”? It isn't a Taylor Jenkins Reid book if I am not left wanting a sequel, or at least an epilogue in this case, but this was a great book and one of my top reads this year.