Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

You’d never guess Taylor Jenkins Reid wasn’t a space geek before writing Atmosphere. But somehow, she’s created a pitch-perfect love letter to NASA’s early Shuttle days—a Gen X dream come true. Set in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the story follows Joan Goodwin, a physics and astronomy professor—and super aunt to her spirited niece, Frances—who applies to join NASA’s 1980 Astronaut Class and actually makes it. Like the real-life women of The Six, Joan steps into a world that wasn’t designed for her. What follows is a beautifully layered journey through training, friendship, and ambition, filled with a cast of characters who feel straight out of NASA lore. You can practically hear the conversations about how women needed to act, be perfect, be twice as good. You can feel the beer buzz at The Outpost and the weight of expectations in every locker room and boardroom. Reid captures that tension—the pull between tradition and trailblazing—with stunning precision. She invents a shuttle and mission so convincing, it’s easy to forget they’re fiction. Fans of The New Guys, Challenger, and Shuttle, Houston will recognize the rhythms and realness of astronaut life. But this is more than a space story—it’s a story about finding your voice, finding connection, and daring to chase something bigger than yourself. Set just before the Challenger tragedy, the timeline adds real-world gravity. The reader knows what’s coming—even if the characters don’t—and that knowledge sharpens the fear, the awe, the stakes. The risks feel enormous because they were. This book is smart, emotional, thrilling, and deeply human. Reid weaves space history with second-wave feminism and asks some big, beautiful questions: Who are we without our masks? What makes a home? What do we owe each other? Through Joan and her sister Barbara, we see the cost of stepping outside society’s expectations—and the hope that comes from generational love and support. And yes, there’s even a space shuttle disaster mystery woven in. It sounds like a lot, but Reid pulls it off with heart and style. If you were a kid glued to every shuttle launch, Atmosphere is absolutely for you.