Taylor Jenkins Reid is apologizing for making me cry. “I’m sorry for breaking your heart!” the author of Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo says, laughing. Luckily, it wasn't a personal affront: The last few pages of her new dramatic romance/space thriller Atmosphere are quite the tearjerker.
The book’s emotional rollercoaster is one of the many reasons I chose it as Good Housekeeping’s June book club pick. (It’s just that good.)
It’s a good time to be Taylor Jenkins Reid. She recently graced the cover of TIME magazine, and rumor has it she’s signed a lucrative book deal for five more books. She also publicly came out as bisexual in the interview for TIME, kicking off pride month with her movingly written queer romance. And many of her works are getting star-studded adaptations, with Serena Williams executive producing Carrie Soto is Back for Netflix and Stevie Nicks hoping for a second season of Daisy Jones and the Six on Amazon (she inspired the titular character, after all).
How She Got the Facts Straight In Her Latest Novel
Despite her success, Reid thought she might be in over her head when it came to the massive amount of research that went into writing Atmosphere.
Set in the 80’s as NASA accepts its first female astronauts, Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan as she strives to go to space. Balancing intense training and her complicated family is hard enough before she finds herself drawn to fellow astronaut Vanessa, and a deadly space accident threatens everything she holds dear. Atmosphere is part dramatic romance, part space thriller, and totally gripping.
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
It's much more scientific than Reid’s earlier work, which explores settings like 50s Hollywood and the 70s music scene. But Reid knew she wanted a story about women succeeding in a male-dominated field, a throughline with her previous novels.
That led her to NASA and outer space, meaning she needed to learn about payloads, flight decks, satellite deployment and more. It’s a tall order to realistically write a space shuttle accident, especially one that Reid needs to be “deadly, but not too deadly.”
“With the scientific details of being in space, I bit off a little more than I can chew,” Reid admits. “I’m glad I didn’t know how hard it was going to be before I did it. The space shuttle scenes were the worst to write.”
To pull it off, she tells me she talked extensively with Paul Dye, NASA’s longest-serving flight director in human spaceflight history. He occupied mission control’s center seat for 20 years — the same seat Joan finds herself in during the deadly space accident. “I’m not good at asking for help,” Reid confesses, but Dye’s firsthand knowledge was invaluable.
His insight into grueling astronaut training, spacewalking and shuttle mechanics helped shape both the setting and the characters. “Paul [Dye] said that as an astronaut, Joan would always have a backup plan. Not just a plan A and a plan B, but a whole list of contingencies. That really helped me understand Joan better as a character,” Reid says.
When the Pages Get Personal
The shuttle-centric scenes were the hardest to write. Easier to tackle were some of Reid’s favorite moments, when Vanessa simply sees Joan for who she is — even if Joan hasn’t admitted it to herself yet.
There’s an incredible intimacy to visibility, especially in a time and place where you have to hide your identity. Joan’s journey of self-discovery and embracing her queerness is both beautiful and painful because of the uncertain future for both astronauts.
“Joan is having kind of a delayed coming of age story,” says Reid. “I know she’s not a real person, but I’m proud of her.”
Reid says the book also offered her a way to spend time with and explore her attraction to women, and it shows: the way Reid writes about queer love is deeply moving and one of my favorite parts of her work. “I knew with this story I wanted to explore the love of two women," she says. "I love to think that somebody who might not ordinarily read a queer novel might read one of my books and end up reading a queer romance. And I am excited that people might see themselves and discover something about themselves through my writing.”
But of all the research and inspiration that went into Atmosphere, the most enduring thing that Reid will take with her is the love it gave her for the stars. To be an astronomer like Joan, you can’t just study the stars, you have to include anthropology, history, mythology and more.
Similarly, Atmosphere isn’t just about love and space. It waxes philosophical on God, science, ambition and family. Where did that inspiration come from? Reid tells me it’s the new way she looks at the night sky, the greatest gift from the process of writing Atmosphere.
In a note before the story begins, Reid writes, “What began as my attempt to create an interesting backdrop for a love story became the beginning of me understanding my place in the world. ... I hope, very much, that you enjoy this story. But I hope, even more, that Joan Goodwin can convince you to go outside tonight, after the stars have come out, and look up.”
Atmosphere is going to be one of the biggest hits of the summer, so grab your copy and dive in. Don’t forget to join the GH Book Club for more great reads, exclusive author interviews and more.
Sarah Vincent (she/her) covers the latest and greatest in books and all things pets for Good Housekeeping. She double majored in Creative Writing and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, where she sat in the front row for every basketball game. In her spare time, she loves cooking, crafting, studying Japanese, and, of course, reading.
