Is there an audiobook of Atmosphere: A Love Story?

Yes. Atmosphere: A Love Story has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Kristen DiMercurio, and Julia Whelan.

How long is the Atmosphere: A Love Story audiobook?

The Atmosphere: A Love Story audiobook runs 9 hr 52 min.

Is Atmosphere: A Love Story on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Atmosphere: A Love Story was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 24, 2026.

Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid book cover for the Book of the Day historical fiction book review

Our score

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Atmosphere: A Love Story free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

EDITION PUBLISHEDJune 2025

Genres

Fiction Historical Fiction LGBTQ+

Themes

Ambition and the cost of reachingLove that arrives late and inconvenientFound family among high achieversObserving life versus living it

Atmosphere: A Love Story

Name: Atmosphere: A Love Story
Price: 12.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid's Atmosphere follows Joan Goodwin, a reserved astronomy professor, into NASA's first class of women astronauts in the early 1980s, where the pull of space and an unexpected love with a fellow candidate rearrange everything she thought her life would hold. Historical fiction with a sapphic heart and a countdown ticking underneath.

The Review

Our take

Before Joan Goodwin fills out the NASA application that upends her life, she's on a dark lawn with her niece Frances, naming stars. Joan is an astronomy professor at Rice, content and careful and a little walled-off, and she loves the sky the way some people love a faith they can practice alone. Reid lets you sit with that woman a while before the advertisement arrives, the one seeking women scientists for the space shuttle program. When Joan applies, it reads less like ambition than like a door she hadn't noticed she'd been standing beside her whole life.

The training sequences at Johnson Space Center are where the novel finds its warmth. Reid writes competent people being competent together better than almost anyone, and the candidates around Joan become the family she never let herself want: a swaggering Top Gun pilot, a guarded mission specialist, and Vanessa Ford, a warmhearted engineer who can take apart any machine and, in time, Joan's defenses too. The romance between Joan and Vanessa is the book's real orbit. It's tender and unhurried, assembled from shared shifts and small risks, and Reid refuses to speed it up. She lets two women be careful in a decade that gave them every reason to be.

Underneath all of it, the book keeps cutting forward to December 1984, to mission STS-LR9 going wrong while Joan sits at the capcom console on the ground, a steady voice in someone's ear as the worst unfolds. Reid has always liked a structure that makes dread and tenderness share a page, and the countdown does patient, awful work here. You know from early on that something breaks. You don't know who, or how badly. The not-knowing is the engine that pulls you through every warm scene that comes before.

Why you should read

Taylor Jenkins Reid's Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones
Sweeping historical love stories with real period detail
Sapphic romance built on slow-burning tenderness
Space-program drama grounded in character, not hardware

What to expect

Dual timeline building toward one 1984 mission
A warm ensemble of astronaut trainees
Emotional payoff that sneaks up on you
Accessible science, feeling prioritized over jargon

What surprised me about Atmosphere is how much science Reid trusts you to feel rather than track. The orbital mechanics are real and they matter, but the book's true subject is smaller and harder: a woman who spent her life observing from a safe distance, deciding at last to be inside the thing she loves, aware of exactly what that can cost. By the time the final mission arrives, the physics and the feeling have become the same problem. Joan wanted to touch something vast. Reid makes you feel, in your chest, why that was always worth the risk.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Atmosphere: A Love Story free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Atmosphere: A Love Story?: Yes. Atmosphere: A Love Story has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Kristen DiMercurio, and Julia Whelan.
Listen to Atmosphere: A Love Story free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Atmosphere: A Love Story audiobook?: The Atmosphere: A Love Story audiobook runs 9 hr 52 min.
Is Atmosphere: A Love Story on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Atmosphere: A Love Story was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 24, 2026.

Filed underHistorical Fiction LGBTQ+Browse the archive →

CollectionsBook Club Picks Browse collections →

More by Taylor Jenkins ReidSee every Taylor Jenkins Reid book we've reviewed, with our scores.All Taylor Jenkins Reid books →

Common questions

What is Atmosphere: A Love Story about?: Before Joan Goodwin fills out the NASA application that upends her life, she's on a dark lawn with her niece Frances, naming stars. Joan is an astronomy professor at Rice, content and careful and a little walled-off, and she loves the sky the way some people love a faith they can practice alone…
Is Atmosphere: A Love Story worth reading?: We scored Atmosphere: A Love Story 4.6 out of 5. Taylor Jenkins Reid's Atmosphere follows Joan Goodwin, a reserved astronomy professor, into NASA's first class of women astronauts in the early 1980s, where the pull of space and an unexpected love with a fellow candidate rearrange everything she thought her life would hold…