First things first, I really like the unique use of language in this book. The writing is peppered with all sorts of interesting metaphors and similes that bring a curious new perspective to the mundane. It adds such playfulness and lyricism, which I think elevates the story's overall tone.

I loved following Annie's journey as she considers her role in the universe. A moment that stuck out to me is when she realizes why she is so passionate about space exploration. To paraphrase, we are all given a set of talents and capabilities by some greater power who takes care of us, and our part of the bargain is to use these talents to the best of our abilities. At first, this seemed like a beautiful way of thinking about it. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much this ideology constrains us. In believing you must use your best talents to contribute to society, you can let other sides of yourself fade into the background. This idea is why passionate, creative people stop making art in favor of doing something more "productive" for society. It is why people claim it's a "waste" when intelligent people go to trade school instead of a four-year college. In this novel, we see how a happy life comes from focusing your energy on all aspects of your life, not just work, and that you aren't a failure if you aren't using all of your talents to their fullest extent.

I also loved getting to know all of the characters and discovering their relationships with each other. The main character's bisexuality was superb! Not only do we see her in romantic relationships with men and women, but we also see how her attraction differs between these two genders. Her attraction between them feels different in a way that is difficult to elucidate, and it shows that bisexuality is so much more nuanced than a simple blanket attraction to all genders.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I'm a sucker for science and space, and the queer representation is what really sealed the deal. This book is for people who love sci-fi, space, and time, as well as those who like to feel butterflies in their stomach as they watch two characters fall in love.

A debut historical novel about the ambitious, intelligent, 1960s era Annie Fisk and her passion for the NASA moon mission. The book tells of the story of Annie’s unexpected scientific discovery and and its impact on love and life. A unique, good read.

A surprisingly compelling blend of historical fiction and speculative fiction, featuring truly admirable characters.

What a fanatstic read. Arsen really created a beautiful story for Annie. The journey she goes on was inspiring and satisfying.

Thank you to PENGUIN GROUP, Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons, and NetGalley for providing an eARC for a honest review.

I wish this book didn’t end!!! A wonderful combination of pan/bi representation and science!! The beginning was a bit slow but got better. I’m glad I stuck with it. Excellent debut novel!

Overall I greatly enjoyed this book. I felt that the beginning of the book was a bit slow, but the story picked up about halfway through and was impossible to put down after that. Even though the story is centered around the space race, I feel that the overall story has appeal to many different readers. How the author covered topics such as deeply held grief and lifelong hurt we can unknowingly carry by not facing this grief was perfectly done. For anyone who is looking for a read that covers love, grief, finding oneself, motherhood, and a bit of science thrown into the mix, then Shoot the Moon is the perfect book.

This is a delightful novel that’s masterfully crafted in terms of its timeline, plot, and language. Set amongst the historical background of NASA in the 1960s, it’s the story of a woman who is not only bisexual/pansexual during a homophobic time period, but who is also a woman in STEM. It’s a story about family, love, and the wonders of the universe.

This book straddles the genres of historical fiction and speculative fiction. It’s set during a very real time period, but it contains main characters who are all fictional, albeit who seem to be vaguely inspired by real people who existed, such as NASA’s programmers and scientists. The speculative elements show up in earnest halfway through the book, and they enhance the strangeness and magical nature of the universe.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Annie’s characterization and the plot drew me in, and I loved all the queer love, nerdy flirting, and familial love. There’s certainly some heartbreak in here, but there’s also the joy of letting others into your heart.

Wow, SHOOT THE MOON is a stunning achievement. I absolutely loved this story of love and science. The back and forth chapter structure works well to keep the reader in suspense. The time travel aspect is presented elegantly, and I especially enjoyed Annie as a main character and her relationships with her parents, Evelyn, Norm, and ultimately, Diana. The day to day details at NASA must have taken a ton of research, but the research doesn't show through; instead, the author expertly puts the reader into the scene with all its wonderful and evocative details. Arsén's writing is at a very high level; she has the literary complexity of a multi-layered plot combined with the power to completely immerse the reader in the story's world. An incredible debut, and I look forward to her next book.

I love books with strong women, especially when those women go against everyone who tries to stop them. This book was a rollercoaster from start to finish. I don't think I expected the wormhole element, but I appreciated how it was written. I also appreciate the simple inclusion of queer characters, even when the book was written in a time when it wasn't simple to be queer.

The downside of this book was the pregnancy trope, though I guess it makes sense. I just don't particularly enjoy when a woman who is smart and capable falls head over heals with a powerful man and ends up with a baby she wasn't expecting without that man there to help. Women need to be MORE than just mothers, and when a woman who is more than just that, I don't like to see them reduced to just that.

Let me start with "I didn't want it to end". It was wistful and glorious and heartbreaking and exciting. What a wonderful debut novel.

This was stunning. A deep, bold, and crackling smart debut.

Annie Fisk is a brilliant mathematician working as a secretary for NASA during the Apollo 11 mission until she catches the eye of one of the engineers and is moved to the new programmer unit. And then one night she discovers an anomaly in the back of the programming room that could change our understanding of time and space.

The story moves backwards and forwards in time between Annie as a young girl, as a student in college, and during her time at NASA, and the author deftly switches between these times and the first and third person to reflect the broader themes of time and distance. It's structurally daring, and it works completely.

In the vein of HIDDEN FIGURES and THE GLASS UNIVERSE (but fiction), SHOOT THE MOON is a complex speculative literary novel imbued with physics and math, but also love and loss and trauma. Arsen will break your heart and light all of the neural pathways of your brain on fire. Highly recommend.

I was lucky enough to win an e-ARC of SHOOT THE MOON by Isa Arsén through a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thanks for the early look, and have a safe and happy summer!

Annie is very good at math, which helps her land a job with NASA during the moon landing. very interesting book.

I went into this book with a lot of excitement because I had been looking for some historical fiction with the Apollo Missions as a backdrop. I think I had something of a Hidden Figures idea in my mind and this wasn’t it at all. So at the end of the day, it was just okay for me.

Annie is a confused young woman with a bit of a sad past. She’s a wiz at math and this helps her to land a job at NASA during the height of the Apollo Missions. A promotion from dictation to programming brings an unexpected discovery that could change the future.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Penguin Group Putnam and Isa Arsen for a chance to read this before it hits the shelves

3.5 stars rounded up for the outstanding bisexual representation, but I had very mixed feelings about this book.

“Shoot the Moon” is historical fiction set primarily at NASA during the moon landing. It follows the life of Annie, a young woman with a brilliant mind at a time when women had limited career options. Her father was a scientist, too, but worked on the bomb, work that plagued him all his life.

Annie wants to go into rocketry but into space exploration, instead. She breaks into NASA in the secretarial pool and works her way up to programmer. While at NASA she finds herself distracted by a charming navigator named Norman, all while nursing lingering feelings for her first love, her college girlfriend. Annie stumbles into a mystery at NASA, an anomaly in space time.

I thought this would be like Lessons in Chemistry but make it queer but it wasn’t really that. I found the pacing uneven. I didn’t expect the spiciness of the sex scenes either - I love spicy romance and I read a lot of it, but this definitely wasn’t a romance. Does every genre now have to have spice? Anyway. A lot more time was spent on Evie’s relationships than the mystery, which I found the most intriguing part of the book.

I found it confusing to follow how the narrative jumped back and forth between Annie as a child, Annie at college and Annie in present day, and didn’t understand why the childhood Annie passages were written in third person. It starts to come together at the end with ((spoilers)) but I still had questions.

But three cheers for well done bisexual rep showing both m/f and f/f relationships as well as historically accurate depictions of what it was like to be a woman and queer at that time. I also liked the author’s engaging writing style.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I received a free e-arc of this book through Netgalley. This is a story about discovering one's self in several different ways during the 1950s and 60s as a brilliant young woman who wants to work for NASA. I found it interesting and it had some exciting moments, but there is a lot of quiet living between the exciting parts.

This book follows Annie Fisk, the child of a physicist, from childhood through her post-NASA career in 1978. The story is not told chronologically, but skips to different times and places. While I found this distracting at first, I adjusted, and found it added to the charm of the story.

Annie was fascinated with science and space as a young child. She idolized her father, and shared his scientific mind. When her father dies suddenly, she struggles to find a common bond with her mother.

Annie leaves her New Mexico home to attend college in Texas. There she meets her first love, Evelyn, She also develops a strong bond with a professor. Both of these relationships remain significant beyond college.

Annie graduates from college and heads to Houston to work for NASA. There, she blossoms both personally and professionally. She falls in love again, and marries her colleague, Norman.

Annie makes a discovery while NASA is working to send a man to the moon. This discovery could impact space travel. This impacts her life significantly.

This is a beautiful story of a woman’s journey. She blossoms from a lonely child to a brilliant scientist. Although it takes a while, Annie learns to give and receive love freely. She learns to move on from loss, and embrace life.

The ending of this book was a lovely surprise for me. It brought the story together in a way I did not anticipate.

This is Isa Arsén‘s first novel, and it is a winner. Her writing is engaging and the characters are multidimensional. I really loved this book, and look forward to seeing future works from Ms. Arson.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House and the author for providing me with an advance copy of this book so I could prepare this review. This book is scheduled to be released in October, 2023.

I had mixed feelings on this one it was a slow start and felt it needed more editing and a more streamlined plot but did like the women in science angle .

Thanks for letting me review this book to Netgalley and publisher

I wish I had liked this book more. I loved the premise, but I struggled really getting into the book. Once I did, I enjoyed the characters and the story, but it took a while.

The Moon has undergone plenty of threats from humankind without this book’s title, but technically this was more of a shoot for the moon sort of thing. As in there is a character who’s obsessed with outer space and NASA and is determined to find her way there—no easy task for a woman back in the day. Fortunately, this daughter of a rocket scientist is brilliant enough to do it. Only once she gets to NASA, she comes across an intriguing and exciting anomaly much closer to home.
She also finds love. And that lamentably proceeds to determine too much of the book’s plot and tone. It might have been an exciting science fiction story but it’s too busy veering into women’s fiction.
There’s also the time jumping, which while justified and plot-consistent, can get to be a lot.
The writing was perfectly decent, especially for a debut. The plotting left something to be desired.
Overall, an intriguing concept somewhat overpowered by estrogen. Both the title and the cover might have used more originality too. A rather quick read. Thanks Netgalley.