When Joan Goodwin was a child, she looked up at the night sky and fell in love with the stars. Now grown, she has applied to the NASA space shuttle program as an astronomer and is surprised and amazed to be accepted. She becomes unlikely friends with everyone in her class, including Vanessa Ford, a pilot and engineer. The novel follows Joan’s career, family, and life from 1980-1984 when events threaten the life of the one she loves.

Thank you to NetGalley and Saturday Book for the digital review copy of this book in advance. It hits shelves on September 2.

Set in the same world as Divine Rivals and Ruthless Vows, this is another stunning novel from Rebecca Ross. This one can be read without reading the other duology as it shares a few characters but actually serves as a prequel with events occurring far before those of the other books.

I said in my review of Divine Rivals that I had hopes for this installment in the duology to make up for some of my unmet expectations. That was certainly the case here. My main disappointment came from my desire for more worldbuilding and fantasy elements in the first one, and it wasn’t even a large concern because the book still got over 4 stars from me. This one gave me everything I wanted and more.

I’m so late to the game with the hype surrounding this duology. I kept intending to read it, borrowed it from Kindle Unlimited multiple times and somehow kicked it down the road over and over again. Then I got an email offering for me to read Wild Reverence (releasing in September 2025) as an early reader. I said yes, knowing that I really enjoyed Rebecca Ross’s writing in her Elements of Cadence duology. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the new book is set in the world of Divine Rivals. So here we are, finally picking up a book I always intended to read eventually.

While historical fiction isn’t usually my top choice of genre, I was intrigued by this one’s description and setting.