Atmosphere
Written by: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio, Julia Whelan, and Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Walking Book Club® Sneaker Ratings
Motivation to Move: 5 Sneakers
Quality of Narration: 5 Sneakers
Overall Experience: 5 Sneakers
Listening and moving time: 9 hours 52 minutes
Atmosphere audiobook review:
A soaring, big-hearted listen that will have you walking with your chin up and your eyes on the sky.
We loved this one. If you are looking for an audiobook that makes you want to keep going — one more block, one more loop, one more chapter — start here.
It's the summer of 1980, and Joan Goodwin, a thoughtful astrophysics professor who has been in love with the stars her whole life, is selected to train as an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Center. Around her is a crew of candidates you will come to care about enormously: a Top Gun pilot, a mission specialist who has worked far too hard to play nice, a warmhearted friend carrying her own secrets, and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic aeronautical engineer who can fly anything with an engine. Joan finds a passion and a love she never let herself imagine. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
At just under ten hours, this is a quick grab — the kind of audiobook you can start on a Monday walk and finish by the weekend without ever feeling like you're pushing through it. Taylor Jenkins Reid does what she does best here: she puts you completely inside a time and place, and then makes you fall for the people standing in it.
Motivation to Move: 5 Sneakers. The structure is what earns this. Reid cuts between Joan's training years and the unfolding hours of December 29, 1984, so you are always moving toward something you can feel coming. We kept walking past the turnaround point. There is also something wonderful about listening to a story this preoccupied with the sky while you are actually outside under it — more than one of us caught ourselves looking up mid-mile.
Quality of Narration: 5 Sneakers. This is a full-cast production and it is beautifully done. Kristen DiMercurio carries the bulk of it with real warmth and restraint, and Julia Whelan — one of our very favorite narrators, and a name that will make many of you hit play on principle — is exactly as good as you hope. The voices stay distinct without ever tipping into performance, the emotional register is trusted rather than oversold, and the technical passages land clearly enough that you never have to rewind while walking. Reid also reads her own author's note. Don't skip it.
Overall Experience: 5 Sneakers. Ambitious, tender, and genuinely thrilling. It's a story about a woman who is allowed to want an enormous life — the career, the love, the wide-open sky — and about what it costs and what it gives back. That's a good thing to think about while your feet are moving.
Atmosphere was a wonderful listen for The Walking Book Club® — bring tissues, and maybe pick a route with a long straightaway for the last hour.