In 2017, the author Taylor Jenkins Reid, known at that point for what the New York Times has called “middling commercial success”, was doing publicity for her fifth book. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was already a switch-up in terms of setting. Unlike Reid’s previous books – largely small-town romances with a twisty premise (i.e., One True Loves: what would happen if you thought your husband had died but he hadn’t?) – Evelyn Hugo takes place in the golden age of Hollywood, as an ageing starlet recounts her tabloid-worthy love life to an accidental memoirist.
That appealing blend of feminist storytelling and celebrity glamour would go on to contribute to Reid’s imminent superstardom across successive works (she has now sold 21 million copies of her books worldwide).
But Evelyn Hugo was also a shift from Reid’s more straightforwardly categorisable work (so-called “women’s fiction”), revolving as it does around the secret romance between two female movie stars. Asked back then by a journalist from the website Bisexual.org why she had chosen now to write about two women falling in love, especially since she was, in the words of the interviewer, “white and straight”, Reid answered: “I wrote this book once I knew that I had enough of a built-in audience that I could write this book. It was a much bigger risk that my other work.”
Eight years later, and Reid is now a literary sensation and on the road for her ninth book, Atmosphere: A Love Story, about two female astronauts falling in love in the early 80s. It is, in many ways, extremely similar to Reid’s other work, a deliciously fizzy concoction of warmth and giddy female ambition. Her characters – Oscar-winners, tennis champions, etc – often reach for the stars, but in this case, quite literally.
But Atmosphere also feels very urgently focused on its queer love story, more so even than Evelyn Hugo. Reid has described it as her first thriller (more on that in a bit), and technically, the stakes are higher. But it also feels like her most intense romance, with far more of the text devoted to the evolution of the love affair between uptight Joan Goodwin, a Nasa astrophysicist, and fiery pilot Vanessa Ford, than the space race that bookends it.
The book opens in 1984 with a mid-flight explosion, before backtracking seven years to when the astronauts meet. It spends far more time in the past than its present, with Reid seemingly much more interested in the seeds of passion than the setting or blockbuster structure. It’s interesting that for the first time the title itself states that it is “a love story” when so many of Reid’s books before have also been so.
Identity can be a sore spot in publishing – who gets to write what? And in a May interview with Time magazine this year, Reid revealed that she is herself bisexual, something she did not exactly deny before, but side-stepped when assumptions were made during the publication and success of Evelyn Hugo (she is married to a man). She told Time: “I am very private. At first, I just sort of let people assume what they were going to assume. It has been hard at times to see people dismiss me as a straight woman.”
Does Reid feel only now that she has enough of a built-in audience to be so open? Her literary superstardom is certainly now undeniable in a way it wasn’t back then. Evelyn Hugo hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2021, four years after publication, thanks to a burgeoning popularity on TikTok (think legions of Gen Z bookworms sobbing enthusiastically), and the signing of a Netflix film that is still in the works. It has since sold more than 1.5 million copies.
Reid’s book Daisy Jones and the Six was made into an Emmy-winning miniseries (Photo: Lacey Terrell/Prime Video)
Its successor, the extraordinarily fun Daisy Jones and the Six – about the sudden break-up of a Fleetwood Max-style 70s rock band, and the did-they-didn’t-they love story between its two lead singers – was also wildly popular. That has sold more than one million copies worldwide, spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and was turned into a 2023 Emmy-winning miniseries starring Sam Claflin and Riley Keough.
Reid’s books are often described as “beach reads” (a term she has said she’s not fond of because of how it implies lower quality). One of the things I personally love about her writing is that, yes, it is immensely easy to read, very immersive and light on its feet, like a gossip with your best female friends over a glass of wine. But just as you’re settling in with your second glass, relaxation coursing through your body, Reid surprises you with shrewd insights into characters’ motivations, or wider observations about how humanity operates.
Case in point: Atmosphere, which amid the heady joy of new love also explores the subtle complications of keeping secret what at a time would have destroyed two women’s careers. Joan observes Vanessa laugh with someone in a way that she feels proprietorial over. Not long after that, Vanessa laughs with Joan, and Reid writes: “And Joan wished she hadn’t seen her laugh like that with other people. So that she could take more pride in eliciting that response from her now.” Reid is a perceptive people-watcher, with a deep understanding of subconscious triggers and behaviours. Her women are spiky and unpredictable. They live in worlds that, like ours, do not offer them easy choices.
Intentionally or not, Atmosphere does also feel more personal than Reid’s previous works, perhaps because, ironically given the subject matter, it is so grounded, spending the vast majority of its time earth-bound with Vanessa and Joan. The high stakes actually feel less about life and death, and more about the conflict between romance and professional success, and also between the myriad ways we can satisfy our own need for meaning and purpose. Joan and Vanessa’s happiness is under constant threat because they fear exposure and the demotion that would inevitably prompt.
The political implications of “sexual deviation” are made clear by their superiors at Nasa: for them the choice between personal and professional happiness is stark. Joan also spends a lot of her time with her much-loved but partially abandoned niece Frances (Reid, as ever, obsessed with dysfunctional families: see too Malibu Rising, about the celebrity Riva family, and Carrie Soto is Back, about a tennis pro), and another choice lurks in the background behind all her actions: the mysteries and freedoms of space? Or the certainties and responsibilities of family?
Reid began her career in Hollywood, doing a degree in film studies and spending four years as a casting assistant before her writing career took off, and she’s exceptionally good at writing her characters into cinematic settings, as well as writing in a style that feels inherently theatrical. Cliff-hangers and clear narrative signposts abound (“There was nothing to be afraid of,” ends one chapter ominously.) Atmosphere has, unsurprisingly, already been optioned for a film.
That said, the familial and romantic focus of Atmosphere actually sometimes leaves the dramatic setting and structure feeling a little superfluous. Reid is so good at detailing the passion of Joan and Vanessa’s early days (there is a lovely moment where Joan’s hives, prompted by overexcitement, are described as the most romantic moment of Vanessa’s life), that it actually feels like a drag when she eventually pulls us back to 1984, where the disaster is unfolding. Some may also find the early chapters a little impenetrable, with all their complex space and physics lingo. The book is better on earth than miles above it.
It is still a wonderfully enjoyable book, with all the ingredients we have come to expect from its author: the perils of fame, what we will risk for love, the importance of family, genetic or found.
Reid has had a few different authorial iterations: twisty chick-lit, celebrity doyen, queen of queer romance, thriller writer. But there is one thread running throughout. In 2015 she told the website Booksbywomen.org: “My passion is capturing what it feels like to love, be it romantic or otherwise… I am endlessly inspired by the tenderness that can exist between two people.”
Love: it remains her forte, whether she’s sending her characters to Hollywood, the beach, or into space.
Atmosphere: A Love Story (Hutchinson Heinemann, £20) is out now