New York Times bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid just announced a new book—the first in three years and it’s expected to be a complete shift from her last four novels. We have all the must-know details, including the title, plot and release date below!
All about Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new book ‘Atmosphere’
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest novel is set to be titled Atmosphere and is expected to hit shelves on June 3, 2025, according to the author’s newsletter.
“A few years ago, I got an itch. I wanted to lose myself in a grand, passionate love story. I wanted to create something that felt page-turning and nail-biting, but also romantic and intimate and lush and heart-expanding. I wanted to get swept up,” The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo author wrote in her newsletter. “And then an image came to me,”
“An astronaut in mission control. The lone voice speaking to a crew on the space shuttle, who find themselves in sudden peril. Who, on that shuttle, is she the most afraid won’t come home? How does she do her job when everything she has come to love about the world is up there and in danger?”
“And now, at long last, I am proud to say that the story of Joan Goodwin is here.”
Atmosphere will take place in the 1980s—similar to Jenkins Reid’s 2021 book Malibu Rising—but, instead of being setin California like the rest of her novels, it is going to be set in space.
“The first thing that I knew that I had to do was start to understand astronauts, their lives, what motivates them, what their day-to-day looks like and how the Space Shuttle program actually worked,” Jenkins Reid said of her research process. “That was incredibly fascinating—but it was a big stretch for my very artistic brain to understand a lot of the science that goes on just to getting the shuttle up into the air.”
She also revealed that she toured the Houston, Texas, Space Center and contacted Paul Dye, NASA’s longest-serving Flight Director.
“I was really, really fortunate that he spent hours and hours of his time explaining to me how Mission Control works, how the shuttle works, and how I could piece together what I was trying to do,” Jenkins Reid says of Dye, who has over 40 years of flight experience.
What is Taylor Jenkins Reid’s ‘Atmosphere’ about?
Atmosphere will take place in 1981 and follow Joan Goodwin, an astronomer who makes history by becoming one of the first women scientists ever accepted into NASA’s Space Shuttle training program. While there, she befriends Top Gun pilots John Griffin and Hank Redmond, mission specialist Lydia Danes, Donna Fitzgerald and Vanessa Ford. Three years later, the group is still as strong as ever until a 1984 rocket mission goes wrong, and Goodwin finds herself doing everything she can to bring her friends and love interest home—before it’s too late.
“I just kept thinking of what it would be like for her [Goodwin] 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,” the author said of the plot.
“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.”
Jenkins Reid is known for writing in both first and third person, and at this time it is unclear what perspective this book will be told in. Another thing the bestselling author is known for is book cameos, specifically in her historical fiction works. And since Atmosphere does take place in the 1980s we may just see some of her old characters like Carrie Soto, Daisy Jones and even Evelyn Hugo might make an appearance.
