So here's the thing — I picked this up because I saw "NASA" and "Space Shuttle" in the description and figured, cool, maybe there's some hard science fiction energy here. I was deep into a late-night coding session, trying to debug a procedural terrain generator that kept producing what my advisor would generously call "abstract art," and I needed something to keep me company. Taylor Jenkins Reid writing about astronauts? Sure, why not. I'm a sucker for anything orbital.
What I got was not what I expected. And I mean that in a complicated way.
Joan Goodwin Is the Quiet Protagonist D&D Never Taught Me to Play
Look, I'm used to characters who do things. My D&D characters kick down doors. Joan Goodwin... Joan observes. She's a physics professor at Rice who's spent her whole life being careful and contained, and when she gets selected for astronaut training in 1980, she doesn't suddenly become an action hero. She stays Joan — reserved, thoughtful, a little bit trapped inside her own head. Reid builds her out slowly, like layering sediment. By the time Joan's romance with Vanessa Ford starts to take shape, you realize you've been watching someone wake up to their own life in real time.
Vanessa, by contrast, is magnetic in that way where you immediately understand why Joan is drawn to her — she's an aerospace engineer who can fix anything mechanical but carries this impenetrable mystery about her personal life. Their dynamic works because it's built on professional respect first, then something deeper. The progression is satisfying. Not rushed, not dragged out. Just... earned. That slow-burn payoff reminded me of what Ship of Brides does with its central relationship — two people thrown together by circumstance who earn every inch of emotional ground before the story lets them have it.
The cast around them is where Reid flexes her ensemble skills. Lydia Danes is the overachiever who's terrified of failure — I felt personally attacked, honestly — and Donna Fitzgerald is hiding something that adds real tension to the group dynamics. Hank and John are the supportive male colleagues who feel authentic to the era without being cartoons.
And then there's Barbara. Joan's sister. Some listeners apparently found her "cartoonishly villainous," and yeah, I can see it. The family conflict scenes between Joan and Barbara hit this note that sometimes feels more like a soap opera than the restrained character study the rest of the book is going for. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's the one place where the writing felt like it was straining.
The Narration Is Actually Three Narrators in a Trench Coat
Okay so the listing says Barbara Villa, and she did the Italian translation narration, but the English audiobook is actually a multi-narrator production — Julia Whelan handles Joan's chapters, Kristen DiMercurio takes Vanessa's POV, and Reid herself reads a section. This matters because the tonal shift between narrators creates this structural effect where you feel the difference between Joan's quiet interiority and Vanessa's more intense, forward-leaning perspective.
Whelan's Joan is understated in a way that rewards attention. She doesn't oversell the emotion — when Joan is processing something huge, Whelan lets the silence do work. DiMercurio brings a different energy to the flash-forward scenes that land with real force, especially during the STS-LR9 mission sequence where everything goes sideways. That tonal contrast between narrators isn't gimmicky; it actually serves the story's structure.
No sound effects, no music — just clean narration. The production quality is solid throughout.
The Ending Will Either Wreck You or Frustrate You
I need to talk about the back third without spoiling it. The December 1984 mission — STS-LR9 — is the pivot point the entire book has been building toward, and when it hits, it hits hard. Joan's hope and anguish in those final sequences got me. I was staring at my terminal at 2 AM with my terrain generator still broken, and I was not thinking about my thesis.
But. Some people found the ending rushed, and I get why. There's a disconnect between the careful, patient character work of the first two-thirds and the velocity of the conclusion. It's like Reid spent 8 hours teaching you to love these people and then resolved things in a sprint. Not badly — just faster than the rest of the book trained you to expect.
Who Gets a Seat on This Shuttle (And Who Gets Left on the Launchpad)
If you want Sanderson-level world-building or hard sci-fi orbital mechanics, this isn't that. Skip it if you need constant plot momentum or you're going to be listening while doing something that splits your attention — this book asks you to sit with quiet moments. But if you're here for character work, for a queer love story set in an era that made such things dangerous, for the specific ache of watching someone realize they've been living half a life — this delivers. It rewards focused listening.
My Thesis Can Wait Another Day
I listened to this instead of writing my thesis. (Dr. Patel, if you're reading AudiobookSoul reviews, I promise I'm also making progress.) At ~11 hours, it's not the 40-hour commitment of a Stormlight book, but it asks for a different kind of investment — emotional rather than encyclopedic. Reid's written something that sits with you after it's done. The image of Joan watching a shuttle launch, knowing everything she knows, knowing everything she's risked — that stayed with me longer than I expected from a book this far outside my usual lane.
