Rating: 3 stars
Official book description:
Houston, 1962
Anne-Marie Smith wanted normal: a loving husband, two beautiful kids, and a well-kept house. But when she catches her husband cheating, she decides that normal isn’t worth it. Now in a new city with a new job, she’s trying to find her new normal—but she knows it doesn’t include the sexy playboy astronaut next door.
Commander Kit Campbell has a taste for fast: fast cars, fast planes, and even faster women. But no ride he’s ever taken will be as fast as the one he’s taking into orbit. He’s willing to put up with the prying adoration of an entire country if it will get him into space.
But Anne-Marie and Kit’s inconvenient attraction threatens both normal and fast. As the space race heats up, his ambitions and their connection collide and combustion threatens their plans… and their hearts.
I feel like Kit is presented as a bit too much of a shallow playboy in the book description. He doesn't particularly seem to enjoy casual sex or the attention of shallow astronaut groupies all that much, and mostly, he seems super focused on his career, not the party lifestyle. Misleading book blurbs annoy me.
This book was a perfectly fine read, but the romance didn't exactly blow me away. What I enjoyed the most about this book was Anne-Marie trying to make an independent life for herself, getting a job, supporting her family, eventually making supportive female friends who didn't judge her for doing the unusual thing of taking her kids and divorcing her cheating husband, rather than stay in an unhappy marriage because divorces weren't really common back in the 1960s. Good for you, Anne-Marie, for looking out for yourself.
I kind of wish Anne-Marie had been childless. Her two plot-moppet children are not particularly engaging and feel sort of non-descript. I'm not sure they brought much to the story.
It was interesting to read a historical novel set in the mid-20th Century, most of my historical novels seem to be set in the 18th or 19th Century. I basically had the visuals for Mad Men in my head the whole time I was reading this. I got the whole series bundled in an e-book sale but still haven't made my mind up if I'm going to read the rest. This was OK, but really not much more than that
Judging a book by its cover: I think the original cover for this book features a photo of a couple embracing, but since I much tend to prefer my own mental image of the characters to whatever the book designer tends to come up with, I really like this stylised cover with period details. The silhouette of the stylish 60s lady, leaning nonchalantly on the title. The little space ship cartoon and the font, it all works for me. To top it off, the background is teal, a colour I really like.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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