This is a near apocalypse story that focuses on the interaction of 5 women on a mission to try and reach another world to provide a sanctuary for the human race to populate. The pace is measured and the interactions interestingly revealed in a flashback method. Although I found it somewhat slow it did hold my interest throughout. Overall an interesting read but not highly recommended.

5 women go on a space mission to try to get to Cavendish, a planet they think can sustain life. Naomi and Veronica, two of the women, have a complicated relationship as adopted child and guardian. The book carried a balance of Naomi's life growing up and leading up to joining the space flight and how the women interacted with each other and the angry people of Earth.

Goldilocks by Laura Lam is a blend of science-fiction, dystopian, and psychological thriller. It follows the main character, Naomi, as she and four other women ‘steal’ a spaceship to travel to a new planet and prepare it for human life. The women were all capable of managing the mission but were pushed aside for an all-male team in a world where women are majorly losing ground in their fight for equality. Meanwhile, this new planet is needed because humans have sadly depleted the Earth of its resources. As the book unfolds, Naomi’s backstory is revealed at just the right pace. Of course, things start to go awry, as they often do in science fiction, and Naomi must make some difficult decisions. Overall, I found this book to be enthralling and eerie (though not in a bad way). I would highly recommend it, and I hope it gets made into a film because it would really excel at the Bechdel test. Thank you to Laura Lam, Orbit Books, and Netgalley for the chance to review this fantastic book! I am so glad to have discovered an incredible, new-to-me author, and I hope to read much more from Lam.

This is old school SciFi with a new and modern twist. I really enjoyed it! The characters are well thought out, fully developed people.

Up against almost insurmountable odds, an all-woman team of astronauts takes a spaceship on a mission to settle on a planet named Cavendish. Earth is not a healthy environment because of the activities of man, so an alternate home planet is necessary. These characters could have been a bit more explored and their motivations more explicit, but overall a good read.

An Earth gasping out its last days leads a group of five women to steal a spaceship and head for a habitable planet called Cavendish that could be the new home for humanity in Goldilocks by Laura Lam.

Climate change is making the Earth less hospitable every day. Political change is bringing down the glass ceiling on women harder than ever. Five women, led by industrialist Valerie Black and her adopted daughter Naomi Lovelace, steal the ship Atatlanta and head out for the planet Cavendish.

The early part of the novel focuses on some of the mechanical and logistical challenges of the space voyage. It becomes clear in the second half of the book that there are different agendas at work and some among the crew may be hiding secrets.

The story is seen mostly through Naomi's eyes and dominated by her and Valerie's viewpoints. The other characters form a nice balance of competing personalities and dispositions. Conditions and politics on Earth are interestingly portrayed both in the present and through flashbacks. They highlight what has led these women to make the decisions they made. The story is more of a slow boiler than fast-paced action. The challenges and close quarters of space flight highlight the tension in the early part of the book. In the second half of the book, distrust among the crew about secrets the others may be hiding ramps up the tension.

Lam does a good job of highlighting the science not only of long-distance space flight but the challenges and possibilities involved in settling a new world. The book also shines a light on societal changes that are one possible extrapolation of both the current political and actual climate.

Goldilocks is a thoughtful book and one that leads to reflection after you turn the final page. A couple of leaps of faith are required in the scheme to steal the spaceship, but they don’t detract from the excitement. Goldilocks does a good job of balancing the science and adventure aspects with thoughtful character exploration. Recommended read.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.

Whenever a book that Netgalley has graciously provided for me leaves me cold, I always feel a little guilty. I'm receiving a book for free, shouldn't I be a little more forgiving? Then answer is always no, but that doesn't stop the twinges of my conscience. I really was enthralled by the opening of this book and ran to my friends to tell them they should probably read it. The blurb is great, I enjoyed the cover, if not the title, and felt like this would squarely be aimed at readers like me. The Handmaid's Tale meets The Martian is quite the pitch. However, I don't think I'd quite so enthusiastically suggest it now.

Unfortunately, the rumbles from other reviewers that I had tried to ignore seem to ring true for me as well. The tight first half of this novel slowly unravels under the weight of "tell don't show" and a lack of further characterization. The book has a very small cast and I still continuously mixed up two characters, Hixon and Hart right up until the denouement and I honestly couldn't tell you anything about Lebedeva until the last 35 pages or so. I was even confused when I reached the final chapter and was suddenly faced with a sudden narrator, having forgotten the conceit that hadn't been mentioned since the prologue. Unlike some other GR reviewers, I was fine with the worldbuilding and didn't feel like the state of the world needed any further explanation. A conservative party that hates women and ignores climate change doesn't seem like a big reach for me to find believable. My main grievance is that I didn't ever feel like I got to know the characters enough to even consider if their actions and motivations felt consistent. That and I was disappointed with the direction the story took once the Atalanta was underway. Much like the spaceship, it feels like this story ultimately went nowhere? The pacing is painful, with the bulk of the narrative happening in small, mundane bits or large info dumps. When I reached the conclusion I felt the arc of the story could've taken place without the women ever leaving Earth, which made everything feel pointless to me.

This review did turn out a bit more negative than I intended, but I think that's only because I was so excited by the first portion of this novel and ended up being let down. I wouldn't be averse to checking out works by Ms. Lam in the future, but this offering sits firmly in the "it was fine" realm.

This is my first time picking up Laura Lam newest novel GOLDILOCKS, I really enjoy this book and how some of these events in this book hit home. Enjoy reading from Naomi perspective and how these women accomplish soo much in their lives to have NASA and the president of the United States to tell them they can't go into space. So glad I have a physical copy of this people. Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for allowing me to review this book.

This was a surprising novel. I requested it because of the description and it didn’t not disappoint! Just as the description mentions. This book is about 5 women to take it upon themselves to ensure the survival of the human race. This was a very in-depth story that I really enjoyed. I did find that in some areas the plot slowed down and I had to push myself through it. Over all it was very enjoyable!

Goldilocks was a book that I can only describe as middle of the road for me. I thought that the comps to Handmaid’s Tale and to The Martian was very accurate, and I know it’ll be a great way to hand sell this particular title, but I personally felt confused at parts and having to stop and pick it back up again. There was a lot of info at the very beginning to set up the plot that felt like could’ve been spread out a bit, and I thought the characters could’ve been a lot more fleshed out than they were. I did love the space travel / exploration, though, which kept me going.

Overall, I know many people who would love this book, but it was just an okay read for me!

First sentence: In thirty years, Dr. Naomi Lovelace has never given an interview. Whenever I asked her to tell me what happened up there, Naomi would say no one who has been to space could ever describe it to someone who hasn’t.

Premise/plot: Naomi Lovelace is finally, finally telling her story: a story spanning four or five decades. Readers get their first hint of what is coming in this description, "Dr. Naomi Lovelace has been many things over the years. Scientist. Criminal. Villain. Hero. Famous. Infamous. Who would she have been, if she’d never gone? In the home clips I watched of her before she left Earth, Naomi was still quiet, but a smile often hovered at the edges of her lips, as if she held a secret she wished she could share. In one clip, taken the year before she left Earth, she’d opened her Christmas presents with the careful, considered way she did everything. A scientist through and through."

Naomi is one of five women who steal a space ship and head off to the planet Cavendish, a planet that perhaps may be humanity's greatest chance for survival after the Earth dies due to climate change and ill treatment at the hands of men. The other women are Dr. Valerie Black (whom readers will come to know a great deal about as she's the captain and mastermind), Oksana Lebedeva, lead engineer, Jerrie Hixon, their lead pilot and mathematician, Irene Hart, their doctor. (Naomi is a botanist.)

The story unfolds in snippets. It is not told chronologically. There are flashbacks, if you will, to her narrative. These flashbacks give hints to the world that Lam has created, and reveal some depth to a few of the characters--notably Valerie and Naomi. These two women are tightly connected. Naomi was adopted by Valerie after her own parents died. But just because Valerie raised Naomi for many years doesn't mean their relationship isn't strained and full of tension. There is HISTORY which leads you to question why Naomi would let herself be convinced that this was a good idea and mankind's only hope.

My thoughts: I am conflicted. On the one hand, I read it in two--possibly three days. It was an action-packed read that kept me wanting more, more, more. On the other hand, once I finished and began reflecting on it, it left me with a meh. On the one hand, I thought there were possibly two characters that were mostly fully fleshed out and developed. But there were so many more characters that we simply never got a chance to actually know. Who were they? Why did they want to leave earth? Why did they team up with Valerie? What were their inner ambitions? What were their hopes and dreams? Did they have regrets? On the other hand, did we really get to know any of the characters? Could the case be made that Naomi is an unreliable narrator? That her retelling of the events is biased and selective? Is she trustworthy? So best case scenario, we get two characters that we know...worst case scenario...none. On the one hand, it was interesting to see Lam's dystopia play out. It's a dystopia where women have been silenced and displaced--taken away from the workplace, lacking almost any opportunity for a successful career and making a meaningful impact on society...and a dystopia where the full effects of climate change are playing themselves out in the extreme. And because earth is dying, because humanity is so desperate, ethics have evaporated....even more than you might expect. Dystopias in and of themselves interest me...even if I don't necessarily buy into the preachy agendas. (You don't have to be able to envision our future as that future in order to appreciate the genre.)
On the one hand, I felt disappointed that readers never really get to see Cavendish and the colonization process. What we're given is two sentences at the end of the novel. I felt it was too little if you actually wanted a science fiction novel with colony ships and the potential of a brand new world and all its dangers. On the other hand, I don't really think Naomi would have/could have chosen differently and stayed true to her character. So the ending both worked and didn't work for me.
I definitely felt the ending was a bit rushed. That being said, I'm not sure the pacing could have endured another ten or fifteen years.

Goldilocks is set in the near future where Earth is becoming less and less habitable. A group of female astronauts decide to steal a ship and fly to Cavendish, a potential new home for humanity. Despite being set almost entirely in space, the main focus of the story are the characters and their development.

I loved the intensity of each character, and how gender politics come into play in society. Women are no longer allowed in NASA in the book, and I loved how each character pushed through the restraints of society and gender roles in order to follow their dreams.

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Wow. I started this book yesterday. Finished it today. It's been a while since I've had such a 'can't put down' book. (Well, can't close my Kindle).
The story-Five women are taken off of a space mission to begin a colony on a far off planet in favor of male counterparts with less training. So they steal the ship and go anyway, only to run into difficulties at various points in their journey. That sums it up-and I don't think I can really talk about any plot points without getting into some major spoilers. Regardless-it was amazing.

It would be easy to dismiss Goldilocks by Laura Lam as a space drama. To do so, however, would mean ignoring the most interesting aspects of the novel, at your detriment. For, the power of the novels lies not in the fact that a majority of it occurs in space but rather all of the factors that brought the women together and keeps them on their mission.

At its heart, Goldilocks is a depressing and yet hopeful extrapolation of climate change projections and political policy harbingers. In other words, Ms. Lam simply looked at current data and political trends and made some guesses on what the future would look like should we, as a globe, continue on our same course. What she shows is not pretty. In fact, most of what she shows is downright depressing.

Thankfully, Ms. Lam does not dwell on what is but on what can be. Goldilocks becomes a call for widespread action to save the planet and save ourselves because, unlike in the novel, there is no backup planet. Even if there was, we still have no way to get there within one person's lifetime. Ms. Lam shows that we all must make tough decisions and that those decisions must not mean abandoning our moral compass.

In addition to the climate issues, Ms. Lam presents a hypothetical scenario should current nationalistic tendencies in global governments continue. Anyone living in the United States for the past three years will understand the growing misogynistic tendencies occurring in healthcare and education and will recognize Ms. Lam's future as a possibility, however distant. Readers immediately understand the frustration of all five women and the actions they take. Still, we must take heed of the warning and take steps to ensure the future of our daughters does not mimic Ms. Lam's hypothetical one.

Goldilocks is a book club's dream novel. It provides ample opportunities to discuss fact versus fiction and reality from imagination as it pertains to our current situation versus that posed by Ms. Lam. For those readers not in a book club, the novel still presents scenarios worthy of reflection and may even induce you to action. You can't ask for more from a novel than that.

First of all - thank you Orbit Books and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I will most certainly be searching for more of Laura Lam's work in the future. If the rest of her writing is this enjoyable I think I'll be in for a treat!

Goldilocks begins with a crew of five female astronauts stealing a spaceship to take to the recently discovered Cavendish, a planet within its star's goldilocks zone and humanity's hope for a fresh start. This is because at this point in the near future, the planet has been used up and polluted to a point where most believe that their children's generation will be the last to survive on their dying planet. However, those in power have used the climate crisis to increasingly restrict the freedoms of women, and the women on board the Atalanta will need to decide to what lengths they will go to ensure that Cavendish is a better place than Earth has become.

This novel felt eerily close to home. It doesn't take place very far in the future, but things have changed just enough that they feel familiar and possible. In a bad way. Earth is close to our own - with the exception that everyone has to wear filter masks to protect themselves from the poisoned atmosphere and the decrease in wildlife. Add to this the corrupt right-wing government, and this future seems not all that far from our present. The story and idea - I loved.

Lam also keeps throwing in twists. Just when you think you've settled in to the story, something else happens that was entirely unexpected. Maybe I'm just an unobservant reader, but there were at least three occasions where I stopped and thought, "Oh no."

I will say that I wish I could have gotten to know the women on the Atalanta a bit more. Naomi and Valerie are very fleshed out characters and their relationship was so incredibly interesting, but I think the backstory of the other three women was lacking in depth. I'd have loved to spend more time with them.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via netgalley. My review is in no way impacted by that fact.

The marketing for Goldilocks bills the book at part Handmaid's Tale, part The Martian. Those happen to be two of my favorite books, so to say I was excited to get to read Goldilocks is an understatement. I wasn't let down, and I think this story is strong enough on its own to not need that sort of marketing.

Goldilocks follows five astronauts as they embark on a trip to save humanity by establishing a colony on a far away planet. Sounds great, right? Well, it gets better, the crew of the Atalanta are all women who are engaged in grand theft spaceship!

I found the characters to feel real and the world created by Lam to be beyond believable and real feeling. The story bounces back-and-forth along multiple timelines, but it is very easy to follow along and that style of story telling really works here. There's plenty of excitement and tension through the story, and if I wasn't experiencing the worst case of reader's block ever due to Covid-19, I would have devoured this story in a matter of days.

I highly recommend if you like space stories, dystopian stories or stories with strong female characters.

4/5 Stars.

When I requested this book, I had a feeling it would be out of my comfort zone. I don’t read many books that take place in space but I couldn’t resist the thriller/horror vibes it was giving me.

My Review: Emotionally-Charged, and Engaging as Hell
While this book initially gave me thriller vibes, it is definitely more of a character-driven story. I took my time reading it and it was just amazing!

The Pros: What worked for me

THE SPACE SETUP WAS SO COOL! I am not a space buff, nor do I know anything about the thought process and planning that goes into a mission into outer space. This book does a great job of making that accessible to all readers without dumbing things down too much. I felt like I actually learned and understood so much more about this area!
I like that this story was only told from the perspective of one character, even though there were 4 other females on board the space craft. It’s not the usual path for a book like this one, but it worked really well (in my opinion).
I loved how the story went between past and present, giving eerie glimpses of a broken-down Earth and showing the events that led to these women making such a bold move.
I love that this novel took the time to explore its dystopian themes; we see the gradual push of women out of their jobs, and watch the Earth reach a point where humanity’s survival is at stake. Most novels just give a brief overview of this and move right into the present moment, but the author really took the opportunity to set the scene.
I really liked Valerie’s character – in fact, she was my favourite. She was so ambitious, so cryptic, and calculating … I loved not knowing what to expect from her. I wish I could have gotten to know even more about her in the story!

The Cons: What I didn’t like

If there is one thing I’m going to be picky about, it’s that I didn’t care for the romance angle. It could have been fleshed out a bit more.

My concluding thoughts? This is a very cerebral, well-researched novel that explores various issues ranging from environmental to moral to political. The blurb describes this as a cross between The Handmaid’s Tale and The Martian, and elements of both are present. While this may not be a “thriller”, it has its twists and turns in the second half to keep the story going. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book so I’m giving it 5/5 stars.

It's hard not to see Goldilocks as the outline for a television series. It's structured like one, with flashbacks upon flashbacks, secrets that are deliberately withheld to create artificial suspense, and a flimsy high concept setting detailed only in throwaway lines. On television these shortcuts serve a purpose. There are budget limitations, an episode count to flesh out, and everything has to be communicated visually. But in a novel these tropes come off as either derivative or desperate to be adapted, and in that sense Goldilocks is one of the most aggravating books I've read since Ready Player One.

Goldilocks promises shocking reveals and whiffs on every one, beginning with the framing device in the prologue. The story is predicated on the idea that our hero Naomi Lovelace has never spoken about these events until now. But something mysterious has happened. Naomi is ready to tell her story for this first time. And she's dictating it to a equally mysterious person who insists this book isn't about her and we don't need to know who she is.

350 pages later, it turns out that everything Naomi experiences over the course of the book is already public knowledge. Everyone involved survived. They provided interviews and court testimony, and the resulting trial was broadcast to the entire world. Even the identity of the mysterious chronicler would be apparent to anyone reading the book. Her freaking name would be on it! She even manages to make the story about herself in the end.

"My mother will never read this book," she writes in the epilogue.

Mysterious chronicler, this book wasn't supposed to be about you! This book was supposed to be about women scientists who steal a spaceship after getting sidelined by a society encroaching on The Handmaid's Tale, who then go on to colonize a new planet and set up a government based on their own principles. Call it a more leftist/feminist take on Robert Charles Wilson's Spin. But they don't even make it to the new planet! They turn around before they're halfway there and then the book ends.

Goldilocks is a tedious exercise in overdeveloped character histories and narrative obfuscation. It could've been fun or thrilling. It definitely could've had a more wondrous scope. But as presented, it's a failure of imagination, a technically competent assemblage of tropes that would be a better fit for visual media than print.

I am ashamed to admit I had to force myself to finish this book, which is an extremely rare occurrence for me. Despite my wonderment at the descriptions of space and the sheer detail of the world-building, I had absolutely zero connection with the characters and the plot twists were predictable. Maybe I’m too cynical.

I landed on three stars because the writing was delicious and deserves four, but the plot itself was a drag for me, made it hard to want to keep reading and therefor receives a two.

Thank you to NetGalley, Orbit Books, and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Goldilocks in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited about this one. I rarely read blurbs, but looking at the cover and title I thought "man, I wonder if that's about a Goldilocks zone planet" - SURE WAS. So I hopped on this immediately. It was advertised as a book for those who liked The Martian, and would be interested in that sort of feel but with five women instead of one dude alone on a planet. I thought, yes, yes that would sound lovely.

It turns out that a bunch of women steal a spaceship and plan to use a newly developed warp drive to go establish a new human colony on a planet called Cavendish. That sounded amazing.

I just didn't click with this one all the way. I still can't put my finger on why, I feel like there are other reasons than I'm going to list, but I just can't find a way to articulate them.

I think part of my issue was the broken up timeline. It didn't feel cohesive to me and I kept getting thrown off my groove when the timeline switched again. I didn't particularly warm up to any of the characters, either. I felt very distant from them and I think maybe it's because of the third person detached storytelling style. Instead of referring to characters by their names, sometimes the prose will reference "the cosmonaut picked up the wrench". It may sound silly and picky, but little things like that built up over time and I just never fell into any of the character's heads or hearts.

I think another big reason is I couldn't find myself enjoying the plotline. It's a well-written plot, it's plausible, it's well researched, it's provocative. It also gives me anxiety. There's an impending apocalypse.... the Earth is fucked. Everyone is wearing masks. Women have started to lose the ground they gained over the past couple of centuries and their expected societal roles are falling back to what you'd expect in the forties. There are rich people in charge, and they are screwing female scientists out of their opportunities. The poor are dying in droves, the land is poison, the air is becoming more toxic, and the rich are watching it all burn while they sip on expensive alcohol and eat meat which is a rarity for everyone else. It was so on the nose. I just squirmed the whole way through the book.

I really struggle to rate this. I think if the first couple paragraphs where I make it sound rosy caught your attention, try it out. This is definitely an "it's me not you". There's nothing wrong with this book, I'm just not in the right headspace to enjoy it. I gave this a 4/5 on Goodreads and I think that's as specific as I'm going to get with the ratings. I'm finding it impossible to try and analyze this one in detail since I bounced so hard off of it but absolutely recognize this is a really good book - for someone else.