Book Review: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

INTRODUCTION

            My favorite books tend to be those that show women thriving in male-dominated fields. I picked up Atmosphere because I saw an Instagram Reel of a woman sobbing her eyes out and I decided, yes, I need that catharsis in my life. Especially with my senior year of college starting in a few weeks. Atmosphere did not disappoint, and I was in fact in tears as I flipped the last page.

OVERVIEW

            Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a new adult love story set at NASA in the 1980s. The story follows Joan Goodwin, an aspiring astronaut in only the second class of female candidates accepted into the astronaut program. While pursuing her dreams of working in space, she cares for her niece, Frances, and battles her desire for one of her fellow candidates.

REVIEW

            On StoryGraph, I gave this book 4.5/5 stars. In general, Reid never misses when it comes to the career-driven women in her novels. As a die-hard fan of Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six and the Demi Moore movie G. I. Jane, I loved the picture of a woman’s life in the foreground of NASA. Plenty of women in other romance novels are professors, writers, coffee-shop baristas, or artists but Reid broke that mold by making Joan an astronaut hopeful.

            There are two main antagonists in Atmosphere– the first being the misogynistic setting of NASA in the 1980s and the second being Joan’s sister, Barbara. While Joan’s off studying space, Barbara focuses on creating the perfect life for herself. The perfect life hardly includes her daughter, Frances, forcing Joan to take on the parental role.

            The best part of Atmosphere is how the reader knows exactly what will happen but is still surprised when it actually follows through. The twists come when the reader discovers Reid went there after the reader’s spent the entire book begging things not to come true.

            I loved how the book tackled broad, relevant issues of misogyny, LGBTQ+ rights, and child neglect (to name a few) framed in the hyper-specific NASA setting. The astronaut-jargon did not negatively impact the reading experience at all. I felt brought into a world I knew nothing about. Reid doesn’t define the jargon but over time, the reader starts believing they too are in-the-know.

            The book is labeled a love story which holds true. Upon entering the book, I expected the love to come between Joan and Frances as mentioned in the dust jacket. However, woven through the pages is a beautiful romance between Joan and one of her fellow candidates. It’s a breath of fresh air reading about a career and family woman finding her true love a little later in life.

            The reason I couldn’t give the book a perfect 5 stars is because I did have a difficult time keeping track of all the secondary characters in Joan’s circle. I found myself flipping back to the inner flap of the dust jacket to get a quick refresher. This is a common critique I have for Reid’s books. Unlike Daisy Jones and the Six where I eventually got a grasp on the cast, I could not differentiate Atmosphere’s even until the last page.

            That being said, Atmosphere is a must-read and would provide great discussion prompts for book clubs. Even weeks after reading it, I sit in my college classes thinking about Reid’s incredibly immersive writing and the heartbreak the book gave. Walking home to my dorm at night, I look up at the stars and smile knowing, while this book is fictional, women really did break through that barrier and made it into space.

Lorraine Durbin ’26 is a creative writing major at Susquehanna University with a specialization in creative non-fiction