There’s something about a Taylor Jenkins Reid book that just pulls me all the way in. Atmosphere was no different. Her characters are always so fully developed, so layered, that I find myself completely invested in them… even when I don’t necessarily like them. And to me, that’s the mark of a really good story.
I read this one in the most perfect setting, too. Before the official start of my birthday trip, I had a solo day at Epcot and decided to “read around the world.” I found quiet corners and shady benches and wandered from country to country with a great book, small bites and a drink here and there. It was one of those simple, slow, exactly-what-I-needed kind of days. And this book was the perfect companion.
Like so many others, I loved the central love story. It was emotional, compelling, and yes, at times a little predictable. But honestly, that didn’t take away from it for me.
What really stayed with me was the relationship between Joan and her niece, Frances. That part felt incredibly personal. I have that kind of relationship with my niece, CeeCee, and reading those pages felt like someone had quietly put words to something I’ve always felt but never fully articulated. Of course, she also has a wonderful mom, but there is something so special about that aunt and niece bond.
I felt this passage so deeply, when thinking about the age and stage I’m at with my boys. Seventeen and twenty in the blink of an eye. Fifty years old when I feel like I should be thirty.
Joan felt, so acutely, that the incurable problem with life was that nothing was ever in balance. That she could not have toddler Frances and fifth-grade Frances at the same time. She could not meet adult Frances and have a moment to hold baby Frances all at once. You could not have a little of everything you wanted.
Joan tried to remind herself that when Frances had been younger, she had held Frances’s little hand every single chance she got. When Frances had been a baby, she had smelled her hair sometimes for whole minutes at a time. She had been present for all of it.
Didn’t that mean that she would not grieve its loss, since she had voraciously and self-indulgently taken all of it that was offered?
No. It did not.
She still ached for every version of Frances.
But to love Frances was to be always saying goodbye to the girl Frances used to be and falling in love again with the girl Frances was becoming.
She missed every Frances she had known.
I felt that so deeply thinking about my boys and my niece and Jay too of course. That idea that you can be fully present, soak it all in and still ache for the versions of them that are gone. That loving them means constantly letting go while also falling in love all over again. That, to me, was the heart of this book.
If I had one critique, it’s that I wish there had been more space. Literally. Given the NASA setting, I found myself wanting just a bit more of that world. I vividly remember the Challenger disaster and have always been in awe of space and astronauts, so I would have loved to sit in that aspect of the story a little longer.
But even with that, this one stayed with me. It’s a beautiful story about love, ambition, identity and the quiet ache that comes with caring deeply for the people in your life.
And maybe the biggest takeaway for me… the ache is part of the privilege.
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