Welcome to Litsy!

My mistake- thinking “I‘ve only got 35min left of this audio - I‘ll finish on the way to work” knowing that the ending could be an ending, and I‘m still very much grieving the loss of our dog recently…. Folks, I was a mess. No matter what the ending was going to be, I was a mess. That‘s on me. And also, not a great way to start a day of work. It‘s my first TJR (despite 3 of hers on my shelf) and I fell deeply into the story. Not perfect but good

I found myself struggling to pick it up. I‘ve read that it gets much better but I was not excited enough to get to that point

Love! So Good! Everything I want from TJR!

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA‘s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.📖

🎧🚨Unpopular opinion: Outside of Daisy Jones, I‘m not a TJR fan. Daisy Jones‘ oral history/interview style forced TJR into a different writing style. The others, I can‘t handle the drama of it all. The writing is so dramatic; the way the characters speak to each is so dramatic. For me, this suffers the same fate as Broken Country. The MC is too perfect. Continued in comments:

She can see the past, but it is now tinged with the excruciating inevitability of the present moment 💔

Because it feels good to love someone…It feels better than anything on this Earth. And I bet better than anything up there 🚀💫🔭

The story of Christa McAuliffe‘s journey to be the first teacher in space. Well written, not too much fluff. The interesting part was reading about the aftermath and the last 2 minutes that I had never read about. We heard about the o-rings but the remains found tell a story of what those astronauts went through. 😣

I love TJR, but I didn't really love this one.
I found the love story to be underwhelming; instead, I was much more invested in the dynamic among Joan, her sister Barbara, and her niece Frances. I wanted more of that.
The ending felt abrupt as well; I was hoping for a flash-forward.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Solid pick from TJR. It is a love story, as advertised, but I loved that the love story had to wrestle for priority with professional ambition and family dynamics, which felt more true to life than a lot of romance books. 🚀

Books 98-104 of the year.