Atmosphere: A Love Story is a 2025 Must Read
Taylor Jenkins Reid charts a course for the stars in her second sapphic outing.
Information
Media: Books & Literature
Genre: Historical Romance
Demographic: Adult
Representation: Main F/F Romance
Do I Recommend? Yes!!!
Rating: 5/5
There is no other author like Taylor Jenkins Reid, and we are lucky to have her. Because sometimes, I convince myself that all I need in a sapphic romance is a good romance, and then someone like Taylor freaking Jenkins Reid reminds me why I fell in love with romance stories in the first place. It’s not the romance. It is everything else.
From the blurb: Astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center to become one of the few people to go to space—an astronaut. At NASA, Joan finds a purpose, unlikely friends, and a love she never imagined. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
Atmosphere: A Love Story is thrilling, emotional, and triumphant. Joan is the type of protagonist you cannot help but root for. She is here to remind us why we have hope in the world, and perhaps more importantly, in ourselves. If you’re looking for an Evelyn Hugo, you won’t find one here. Joan is an ideal hero—a hero that is constantly challenged by the narrative but always sticks to her moral codes and intrinsic beliefs.
Joan is a team player. She is level-headed. She is empathetic, strong, and optimistic. She knows what she wants, and she is persistent in getting it. Her relationship with her niece is, in many ways, the emotional crux of the story, and I was sold on it. You probably got tricked into reading Atmosphere for the romance and the space exploration, but you will stay for Joan’s commitment to Frances.
Let me be clear: Joan is not a mother. She is not Frances’s mother. But she is what Frances needs. She is the person in a young child’s life who reminds them that they belong and that there is nothing they could do or say or feel that could ever change that. Many of the best quotes in the novel are Joan talking to Frances, and they are quotes that I will remember for a very, very long time.
Then, of course, there is Vanessa, Joan’s love interest. Vanessa is an aeronautical engineer who loves flying. She drives a convertible and knows how to make a three-point turn with one hand. She was a wild child. She did drugs, slept around, and disobeyed the rules. She is, as she jokes herself, the girl you usually don’t want to bring to meet the family. She is also a hopeless romantic and a knight with a heart of gold.
At its heart, Atmosphere is about rational people making rational decisions in the name of love. Joan and Vanessa are refreshingly, breathtakingly, perfect for each other. They are grown adults who act like grown adults, despite the spades of adults around them who act like children. With Joan and Vanessa, I think I have finally found my comfort couple. My ideal couple. What I hope every romance one day has the potential to be.
Atmosphere is a love story. It is a love story about many things. It is a love story about space and exploration and humanity, and it is also a love story about romantic love and familial love and platonic love. There are not many books out there that manage to celebrate so many facets of the human experience all at once, and I think we should embrace the ones that manage to do it and do it well. Atmosphere is one of those books.
As a novel and a project, Atmosphere would not have been possible without Reid’s gift for infusing every aspect of her storytelling with her character’s interests. In addition to all its other triumphs, Atmosphere is an amazingly well-researched historical novel about NASA and the space shuttle programs in the 1980s, and Andy Weir wrote the cover blurb, so you know it’s going to be good.
In Atmosphere, I fell in love with Joan’s way of seeing the world, and that means I fell in love with stars at the same time. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
Have you read Atmosphere? Are you a fan of Taylor Jenkins Reid? Let me know in the comments below!