Atmosphere A love story

Reid (Carrie Soto Is Back, 2022) returns with a wildly entertaining yarn about a group of NASA astronauts in the early 1980s. Astrophysicist Joan Goodwin enters the space program in 1980 with aspirations to be chosen for a space shuttle mission. Perpetually single and deeply devoted to her younger sister and beloved niece, Joan soon finds herself embroiled with her fellow hopefuls, including John "Griff" Griffin, who's sincere and handsome--and interested in Joan; abrasive, competitive Lydia Danes, who very much wants to be the first woman in space; and beautiful, confident Vanessa Ford, who longs to put her piloting skills to use in space but faces resistance. Joan, who has secretly wondered if romance is not in the cards for her, is thrown off-kilter when she falls hard for one of her fellow astronauts. Reid interweaves the story of Joan and her friends working towards their goals with a 1984 mission that goes disastrously awry, putting multiple lives in jeopardy. Reid's latest is thrilling, immersive, and moving; she delivers everything readers have come to expect from her, against the backdrop of life-or-death stakes in the space program and anchored by a beautifully explored queer romance. Sure to be a summer--and beyond--blockbuster.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Reid is practically a household name since Daisy Jones took over shelves and screens. Readers will be thrilled to grab her first novel in three years.

Reid's transportive latest (after Carrie Soto Is Back) revolves around a forbidden love between two female astronauts in the 1980s. In 1984, a botched satellite deployment by the Navigator space shuttle kills several members of the crew. As the disaster unfolds, capsule communicator Joan Goodwin desperately tries to advise surviving engineer Vanessa Ford from Houston's Johnson Space Center. The narrative then rewinds seven years, to when Joan, a "Goody Two-shoes" astronomer at Rice University, feels a "pull deep down in the layers of her skin" upon learning that NASA is recruiting women for its astronaut corps. While training as a mission specialist, she meets tall, curly-haired Vanessa, an aeronautical engineer who longs to pilot the space shuttle. The two women are drawn to each other and begin a romance, which they keep secret due to NASA's prohibition against "sexual deviation." Their reticence makes the ill-fated 1984 flight even more poignant as Reid keeps the reader in suspense about what happens to Vanessa. Along the way, Reid makes palpable the astronauts' passion for their work and captures in vibrnt detail the era's high-stakes and fast-paced shuttle program. The author's fans will find much to enjoy. Agent: Emily Sweet, Park Fine & Brower. (June)

Once again, Reid (Carrie Soto Is Back) shows that her prose has the power to launch. She takes the 1980s NASA space shuttle program to new heights in a novel that explores feminism, sexual identity, and humans' innate desire to find a world bigger than themselves. At the heart of the story is Joan Goodwin, who leaves her quiet life as a physics professor at Rice University when she's selected to train at Houston's Johnson Space Center. There, she prepares for space travel alongside pilots, scientists, mission specialists, and engineers who become like family to her. One of these is Vanessa, a brilliant astronaut who challenges Joan's ideas about love. At the same time, Joan feels anchored to Earth by her family, especially her niece. At the center of the novel is a deadly catastrophe on mission STS-LR9, for which Joan is serving on the ground in Mission Control. The plot unfolds in chapters that move between the STS-LR9 crisis and the years leading up to it, giving glimpses of what happened before that make what's happening in the moment even more gripping. VERDICT From Reid's tender introductory letter to readers, all the way through the final chapter, this gritty and glorious book challenges what it means to look at the universe from different vantage points, but it never loses sight of the plot's urgency or authenticity of the characters.--Emily Bowles

A female astronaut in the 1980s encounters sexism and finds romance as she chases her dreams. Joan Goodwin has always been obsessed with space, which is why she became an astrophysics professor at Rice University. But then, something happens that she's only dreamed about--NASA announces that it's looking for female scientists to join the space program. Joan is accepted on her second try, and in 1980, she begins training with a group of male and female candidates who, while all brilliant, have a wide range of personalities. Some of the men are sexist and spend most of their time cracking offensive jokes, but Joan finds a friend in kind-hearted pilot Hank Redmond, who gives her plenty of opportunities to learn. Joan finds both camaraderie and competition among the women--there's determined Lydia Danes, who embodies the "I'm not here to make friends" ethos, and the more supportive Vanessa Ford, who quickly becomes one of Joan's most trusted allies. As the group trains together, they begin to feel like a family--and as Joan grows closer to Vanessa, she realizes that life on Earth may contain just as many wonders as the cosmos. The story cuts back and forth between a disaster in 1984 and the story of Joan's journey through the space program. Reid keeps the tension high, making this perhaps her most propulsive novel yet as she balances the drama of Joan's personal life with the fast-paced action of a catastrophe in space. Even with the high-stakes action, the touching and surprising love story is the emotional heart of the book. A heart-pounding race against the clock combined with a love story adds up to a novel that's impossible to put down. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.