“I’m excited,” Vanessa said, closing the gap between them. “I want to take you everywhere. And do everything with you. And ask you every single question that’s been on my mind for months. And I want to know when you knew what was happening between us and I want to tell you when I knew. And I want to hold your hand in a quiet corner and I want to lie in bed and hear your heartbeat through your chest. I want to bring you coffee in bed. And I want to hear you tell me anything you’ve always wanted to tell someone. Because you know that you’ve met someone who desperately wants to listen.”
page 175, Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Table of Contents
Preamble
I’ve been hearing about Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid since sometime after it is release. It is not until I heard about the book being mentioned positively in a video by The Book Leo did I go ahead and put it in my to-be-read pile in August 2025. This is my first time reading anything by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
At the same I also put a hold on it in the Toronto Public Library system knowing that it was going to take a while to get my hands on the book this way. The book is quite popular and as such a high amount of holds on it. As of the time of writing this, the book has 486 holds on it with 240 copies in circulation.
The hold came in just near the middle of December, right around the time where I had already finished writing my books of the year post. I was originally planning on suspending my holds until the 1st of January, 2026 but had forgotten. So it was entirely possible that I did not read this until next year.
But here we are, so without further ado, let’s get into it.
The Book
Atmosphere is a historical fiction novel set in 1980s America revolving around the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. As the cover of the book makes clear this is also very much a love story and large portions of the book center the lesbian love story of two of the main characters – Joan Goodwin and Vanessa Ford.
My initial criticisms of the book come from a structural perspective. The book jumps around in time from the “present”, the STS-LR9 mission in December 1984 and the previous years starting from 1977 till the mission in December as the group of astronauts meet, train and bond. The problem I have with these time skips at the beginning of the book is that they break the flow of the book and as such it comes across as disjointed and disorienting.
This is a book that centers the women in 1980s NASA and to its credit does not shy away from depicting the rank misogyny present in 1980s America. That said, it is still quite unpleasant to read said depictions. 30% of the way through the book I almost marked this book as another DNF because of a male character in this book making sexist jokes. It is just tiresome to read.
I am glad I decided to continue reading the book after that point because when this book gets good, it gets really good. The structural issues clear up and the romance between Joan and Vanessa heat up to heartwarming degrees. There is also the sub-plot of Joan and her niece Frances which I found to be quite touching.
The romance plot here is intense, there is so much tension and yearning. Atmosphere being set in the acutely homophobic culture of the 1980s meant that our two lovebirds couldn’t be openly out and in a relationship which leads to eye watering moments of union and heart breaking moments of yearning and conflict, both internal and with external societal norms.
The other astronauts barely feel like characters on their own. I had a hard time connecting with Hank Redmond, John Griffin, Lydia Danes, or Donna Fitzgerald because so much of the book is focused on Joan and Vanessa that the rest of the crew felt more like propulsion fuel for Joan and Vanessa’s story than actual characters in their own right.
As for the space travel itself, I found that Atmosphere does a fantastic job of invoking the right sense of fear, awe and tension of our initial forays into the cold void of space. Space travel is inherently very difficult and dangerous – a fact that continually weighs on the minds of the astronauts in this book. They are all afraid but they continue to have the courage to go up there.
This book hits the landing with its ending, pun fully intended. It combined the precarity of space travel with the love story at the heart of this book in a way that had my heart pounding with the palpable tension and also sobbing at what the ending could mean for Joan and Vanessa.
Conclusions
Atmosphere is the last book I will read and review in 2025 and it was a damn good book to end the year with. Considering that I started the year with an absolutely atrocious book, this book was a nice contrast to bookend the year with. As far as books of the year are concerned, I have been considering adding this book to my list of 2025 books of the year but I think there are enough annoying flaws for me to disqualify it.
I enjoyed the sapphic romance aspects of this book quite a lot and it made me want to read more such sapphic romances. I have the latest Tasha Suri book, The Isle in the Silver Sea sitting in my library holds list since October 2025 and I hope I can read that before my interest in sapphic romances wane.
Now that we are here at the end of this review, time for a mini-rant – I was looking into maybe getting a physical hardcover copy of this book for my collection. Not only is there no hardcover edition available in Canada, the only paperback editions available in Canada have deckled edges which I very much loathe.
I am baffled as to why Canada does not have a hardcover edition and why if I wanted a hardcover edition I would have to import a copy of the book from the US or the UK. This is not the first time this has happened this year, The Raven Scholar is also not available in hardcover here in Canada. I had to import the special Illumicrate edition from the US to be able to add it to my collection. Let me easily buy hardcover editions of books! Also, stop putting deckled edges on books!
Okay, rant over. I wish y’all happy holidays and a happy new year. See y’all in the next one.
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