We'll get the bad news out of the way first: Bookworms must wait until June 3, 2025, to get their hands on a copy of Taylor Jenkins Reid's new book Atmosphere. But the great news is that fans of the author—who manages to transport readers to different eras with such clarity you'd think you were time traveling—will not be disappointed in her newest title. In an interview withVogue, the author of Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo said she wanted to "tell a grand, epic love story."
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Atmosphere takes place during the 1980s, when physics and astronomy professor Joan Goodwin becomes one of the first female scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. While training at the Houston Mission Control Center, she falls in love with a fellow astronaut, causing her to "question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe," according to the official book description. "Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant."
“I just kept thinking of what it would be like for her to be down on the ground when one of the people that she loves is up there in space—her having to talk through how to manage this monumental disaster, while she knows that the person she loves may not come home,” Jenkins Reid told Vogue. “I wanted so badly to tell a story that was life or death, where the stakes were so immediate—and we understood that it might not always go the way that we want it to go. There's something beautiful to be found in this heightened moment.”
In true Jenkins Reid fashion, she took her book research very seriously, spending several months in Houston at the Space Center, reading up on the topic, and even speaking directly with Paul Dye, NASA's longest-serving Flight Director.
As for the title of her new novel, Jenkins Reid told Vogue: "The atmosphere is what makes it so that the earth is suitable for human life,” Jenkins Reid explains. “So the atmosphere is life. That's what keeps humans alive here on Earth and thus is the meaning of life."
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Fans of the author are beyond excited.
"THE SCREAM I JUST LET OUT. my fav author is back 😭," one reader commented on her Instagram post.
"Don’t need to read it to know I already need a film/series about it 🚀," said another. (Jenkins Reid's famed novel Daisy Jones and the Six was made into an Amazon mini-series by Reese Witherspoon's production company Hello Sunshine. And The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo just sold to Netflix.)
It won't be easy waiting eight months, but you can pre-order Atmosphere now. Or, check out one of Jenkins Reid's other titles:
- Forever, Interrupted (2013)
- After I Do (2014)
- Maybe in Another Life (2015)
- One True Loves (2016)
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017)
- Daisy Jones and the Six (2019)
- Malibu Rising (2022)
- Carrie Soto Is Back (2023)
