I legit screamed when I saw that I got this ARC. (Mom, I made it!!) Taylor is one of, if not my favorite author, and I will read ANYTHING she writes. Everything she puts to paper is phenomenal, and I have never read a book from her that isn't five stars. This one unsurprisingly follows that trend.
I adored this. TJR has a talent for introducing topics or subjects to her readers that they may not think they care about but end up truly obsessed with by the end. For example, and a big one at that...Carrie Sotto and tennis. I almost didn't pick that up because I didn't care about tennis, so I didn't think I would connect with the character or the story. Boy, was I wrong. That was the case for me here as well. Space and being an astronaut are cool and all, just not something I thought I would want to read about. Again, boy was I wrong.
Her strengths are always her characters, but I found the plot here to be compelling as well. We start on a huge suspenseful moment and spend the rest of the book leading up to that point. I flew through this because I wanted to know how that beginning scene came to be and its outcome! There is truly so much good here and no bad. The representation of characters and seeing their growth was wonderful. Each one of them jumped off the page, and I care so deeply about each of their stories. Plus, seeing how being gay was perceived in a STEM field in the 80s was hard to read and heartbreaking but also super important to understand and made you love these characters even more. (There was a little bit of Evelyn Hugo sprinkled in here, but with a much better outcome...)
I was rooting for the characters so much and love that TJR does not follow the traditional romance plot trajectory nor regular fiction trajectory but molded it and made it work for her story. Beyond the relationship, you see two brilliant women with strong passion in a male-dominated field. I loved both of them so much and felt I was reading a biography and not a fiction novel. You can tell that Reid does a lot of research into the books she writes, and the knowledge passed along is vast. Coming from this, I learned quite a bit about space and being on a spaceship. On top of ALL of that, you also get a difficult family dynamic and a wonderful aunt-niece relationship to really tie the whole plot together.
The emotions here are also super high. I found myself getting emotional at several different points. Her writing is just so beyond beautiful, and the imagery about the sky and how she found ways to relate that to romance was perfect.
TJR nails it every single time with every single aspect. God tier women. God tier writer. God tier book. Please never stop writing.
I loved this. Clearly.
5/5 stars. As always.
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