Mixed feelings! This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and I found it a little disappointing, but the ending saved it. There was much rejoicing and caps-locking in my notes at the big reveal.

This is a puzzle-box time travel novel, like Sea of Tranquility (though not as good IMO) meets Hidden Figures (if Hidden Figures was about a white woman). The final reveal sticks the landing, but many of the other puzzle pieces don’t work as well. There were scenes where I was like “I don’t understand why this scene exists, it seems unnecessary,” and then eventually I realized they were necessary for time-travel plot reasons. Which, fine, but I think a really well-crafted novel of this type would make all the scenes feel relevant from the start, and you would realize later that some of them were relevant for other reasons as well. There were also other puzzle pieces that just didn’t make sense to me or that I didn’t find satisfying.

The other thing that didn’t quite work for me was the book’s approach to queerness. I don’t mean that it’s ~problematic~; this is an artistic rather than political or ethical complaint. There are a number of ways you can write queerness in historical fiction, for example: maximum realism / historical accuracy (think Last Night at the Telegraph Club or The Great Believers); or an explicit alternate history where homophobia doesn’t exist (think To Paradise or You Feel It Just Below the Ribs); or a deliberately handwavey/anachronistic portrayal that’s like “let’s just not really think about homophobia here even though it technically exists” (think The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue or Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure). I have read and enjoyed all of these different approaches, but this book’s approach didn’t make sense to me.

This book isn’t an alternate history, and it doesn’t ignore homophobia, but nor does it feel realistic. Annie’s social circle includes a man who gets arrested at a gay bar, and a woman who’s disowned by her parents for being a lesbian, so Annie is clearly aware that homophobia can majorly affect your life. And yet, even though her dream is to work at NASA, and even though the book takes place during the years of the Lavender Scare and Executive Order 10450, which led to the firing of thousands of gay federal employees, it never once crosses Annie’s mind that her sexuality could affect her career. And it’s not that the time period is incidental, either—the book explicitly indicates exactly what year each chapter is set in, and at least one real historical event is important to the plot.

Portray homophobia, don’t portray homophobia—I’m open to either. Maybe there were some people in same-sex relationships in the 1960s who didn’t think much about homophobia. But based on everything we know about Annie, it doesn’t make sense for *her* to not think about it.

I loved this book! It has two things that are not represented in books very often - women in science and bi representation. I appreciated both being included! The story is well written, emotional and kept me guessing. I loved every second of it!

Thank you so much for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are completely my own.

Ok so this book gets like a solid 3.8/5 for me.

This was a relatively quick read for me and while I was able to figure out some of the plot twists, there were some that I didn't catch until the reveal. I love the concept of this novel, and I feel like it was on the right track to follow in the veins of "Lessons in Chemistry" meets "Hidden Figures." but it didn't quite hit the mark.

Annie Fisk is bisexual, but given her inner monologues we get, she is coded more like an aromantic bisexual. None of her relationships with other characters feels full fleshed out, and they feel one sided from the other party. This made some of the romantic and family plotlines a little less believable (especially how "distracted" she claims to get)

HOWEVER, she gets major kudos for being a bad a** lady scientist, who has the guts to speak her mind, but at the same time never actually feels like she achieves her goal of getting to space. With all the time jumps, its takes until about halfway through the book to actually get to NASA and even then, there is not a lot of plot dedicated to her work with Apollo 11. At this point the story goes into what I at first thought was left field, but in reality it was the glue that brought the entire novel full circle. By the end, I was much more able to better appreciate what the overarching themes were.