Taylor Jenkins Reid is a household name by now with big hits under her belt in several arenas. Books like The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and the six and Carrie Soto is back. The latter being made into a film with Serena Williams as executive producer, the former never escaping the rumor mill of castings and updates and the middle already a very successful audiobook (with an absolute stellar cast – Jennifer Beals, Benjamin Bratt, Judy Greer, etc.) AND a tv show starring Riley Keough, Suki Waterhouse, Camilla Morrone etc. We also got a movie out of her backlist book One true loves starring Philippa Soo and Simu Liu.

Taylor or TJR is no stranger to success. But while her fellow successful writer Gillian Flynn said she’s finding it hard to follow up to her success of Gone girl, TJR doesn’t seem to have that issue, pumping out novels and satisfying her fans all around the world.

Three years after her last book Carrie Soto is back, TJR is back with a sapphic romance novel set at NASA with two women vying for space.
The upside is that I enjoy TJR’s writing. Period. It’s easy to read, her characters are flawed but likeable and she phrases and paces things well.

If there is a downside on this one, it’s the space jargon and the setting. (I was much more putty in her hands with old time Hollywood in Evelyn Hugo.) While I am nostalgic for the 80’s and that “simpler time” it didn’t really capture that mood fully. Perhaps it was more important to set the time for the space exploration (before it became mundane) and for the sapphic love story to have a sort of forbidden context. (Same-sex sexual activity was decriminalized in 2003 in Texas.) I get that and I’ll accept that premise.

The story centers around Joan who has loved space since she learned what a star was, and who is now as an adult being accepted into the NASA space shuttle program. She’s also a devoted aunt, a task she takes very seriously, since her sister Barbara has a tendency to chase happily ever afters, even though it evades her at every turn.

I wasn’t very invested in the space program, the love story or the aunt/niece relationship, the most interesting relationship to me was the two sisters. Maybe that says something about my life and the people in it, but that’s where I was.
Of course Joan finds community and likeminded fellows at NASA, and she shares her passion with her niece, so her sister was really the only one that triggered her. (And what is a story without some conflict?!) Barbara was everything Joan wasn’t and vice versa and it created an intrigue I didn’t find anywhere else.
When it came to Barbara, the story felt unfinished to me.

While I enjoyed the love story and found that absolutely beautifully and carefully told, I wanted more interactions with the sisters. (This I am afraid will be a hot take, the sister is pretty insufferable.) I also wanted more depth from the sister. The one who didn’t have a dream to chase, but desperately wanted someone to create one for her. I wanted her to see the errors in her ways and I wanted to explore more of that complicated mother/daughter relationship between Barbara and Frances when Joan was stepping in. There is a whole story there I would love to dive into. And who knows, it’s TJR – she might just give us that one day.

In TJR’s universe I wouldn’t say this book is my favorite, but is it a good book? Absolutely! She’s just set the bar so high, even TJR herself is having a hard time reaching it. But I do love every attempt she’s ever made.

PS: Since there is a neve ending debate on who has the better book cover – which is your favorite? US or EU?