Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

Recently published by Ballantine Books in June of 2025, Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, her ninth novel, is supposedly unlike her previous works, which include her big hits The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & the Six, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto Is Back. Her lesser known earlier novels include Forever, Interrupted; After I Do; Maybe In Another Life; and One True Loves. I say “supposedly” because this is my first novel of hers. It most definitely won’t be my last.

I watched the first moon landing on July 20, 1969, sitting on the floor in a dark and unfamiliar living room at the home of family friends because they had a larger color TV.

I have been intrigued by NASA and the space program since I heard President John F. Kennedy’s September 12, 1962, brave and ambitious declaration:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” (Source: https://www.rice.edu/jfk-speech)

On January 28, 1986, I also, unfortunately, was watching TV when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on live TV.

So, when I learned that Atmosphere was about the space program, I added my name to the long list on Libby to read on my Kindle via my public library system. In only three nights I flew through this propulsive work of historical fiction. It bounces back and forth between two timelines, pre-women astronauts and women astronauts actually in space.

If you google this book, you can find out quite easily why this book is different, and you can also find out that this book is not just a book about space. It is also about love, duty, sacrifice, ambition, intelligence, work ethic, and so much more. It’s about women proving that they can do the hard things, just like the men in the NASA astronaut program.

However, I don’t want to give away any of the plot points that surprised me so I am not going to do any spoilers, even the one that is all over the internet. Instead, I’ll paste in this blurb from the New York Times:

Atmosphere: A Love Story (2025)

“In 1980, Joan was selected as one of the first women to train as a NASA astronaut. We meet her four years later, as the steadying voice on the ground guiding her comrades through a flight gone terribly awry. Chapters leap between the edge-of-your-seat mission and Joan’s past, showing how she grows into a top-flight astronaut, aunt and love interest.” (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/taylor-jenkins-reid-books.html)

I loved this book. After a few lackluster books in September, I was thrilled to read something that kept me up too late, made me laugh, made me cry, and made me wonder what it would be like to be that smart, that brave, that adventuresome.

Atmosphere is billed above as a “love story,” but I think it is also a coming of age story for the main character, Joan. She had all the makings of a truly special individual, a great sister, a great aunt, a great student, but in this story, she matures and evolves into the very best version of herself, reaching her true potential as a truly special individual.