"Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation."
I really enjoyed the writing and the quick tension build - I also appreciated reading scifi with such comprehensive female representation.

Thank you netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for a fair review.


Based on the book blurbs, this was not the book I expected. But not in a bad way. I ended up thoroughly enjoying the book even if it has a few shortcomings.

The story follows a astrobotanist in the near future, in a world that grows more believable by the day. Climate change, economic disparity, religious rhetoric in politics leading to the over turning of Roe Vs Wade. Women have not been barred from the work force, but they are being pushed out. Not getting to advance in careers, receiving benefits to be SAHMs for the first 4 years making it much harder to reenter the workforce after. Our character is the adopted daughter of a CEO billionaire whose worked in the science and space sectors. Showing that women still have some power but only of they have money and are deemed useful. Her company helps build a insterstellar craft that will travel through newly created jump gates to a habitable planet called Cavindesh. However, her company is dropped from it once its completed, so she gathers a crew (including her adopted daughter) and steal the ship. A crew of 5 women take on the world with the plans of traveling to Cavindesh and trying to ensure it won't become a ruined Earth 2.0. However, most of the crew are idealists, that didn't really think this through, leaving the one with the plans in power, and a God complex. So things don't go quite as planned.

What I liked:
The tone, the whole book had a airy quietness about it, not action packed, but very introspective. It gave me "Do you dream of Terra two" vibes. The science felt believable and digestible, and the events felt believable and digestible. I read it quickly, wanting to know what happens, and it really made me think about how I would handle the situation, and how my morals and philosophies would play the role. I like that there were some consequences, that not everything got wrapped up in a neat bow. There were stakes, without a clear line of who is right and who is wrong.

What I didn't like as much:
The framing of the story, I don't think there was really any need for it it to be framed like a memoir. Other than to set up the final chapter. The character writing it being a completely new character introduced in the final chapter made it feel even more pointless. I also feel like it set up the story to be more intense than what we actually received.
The characters, other than our main character, are not fleshed out at all, I often had to double check who was speaking, because they were all voiceless, faceless, backgroundless creations only there for our character to interact with. They didn't really add anything to the story, which felt like a missed opportunity to really showcase women.
At first I liked the dual timelines, seeing what led to this moment and experiencing the moment. But very quickly the chapters in the past stopped offering anything interesting or worthwhile, and the present began to feel rushed, with large jumps in time to accommodate these chapters. I wish more time had been focused on the dynamic of them in space. More tense moments, more character building. I want to know that story, as I feel like we got maybe 4 major moments in space.
Valerie, our CEO billionaire also felt like a missed opportunity, she was so smart that I believed her for a bit. Then suddenly it felt like the author gave up on her, and it became a "I could've gotten away with it if it wasn't for your meddling kids" moment. Also, with all the emphasis on women getting the short end of the stick, to make Valerie out to be the baddie, what is the moral goal of the story. It could've been a great opportunity to discuss the moral compass and desperateness of oppressed women. However this is one aspect that did get glossed over and forgotten.


So overall I'm very mixed, while reading it I was enthralled, I wanted to know more, but iverallbI was left still wanting to know more. A more analytical reflection on it showed many missed opportunities and confused intentions. To have a quiet and introspective book, we need more opportunities doe introspection. More time with the characters, events, and interactions. With more time and a clearer goal, this book would easily become a favorite for me. But in the end it made me want to immediately revisit "Do you dream of Terra two" to get my character development in space fix.

At 35% in I’m unfortunately deciding to dnf this book. I did look up spoilers because I was curious to how it ended, but didn’t want to waste my time forcing my way through it. It’s slow, and while the plot is fascinating in theory it’s hitting too close to current events and I don’t want to read about something I’m currently close to living. Reading is supposed to be my escape.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for a egalley copy for review, and so sorry it took me this long to get to it! I hope to revisit this another time and hopefully finish and enjoy it, but maybe not as it might just not be for me.

Goldilocks is akin to The Handmaid's Tale meets The Martian. In this future Earth it is a nearly dystopian scene - you must wear a mask to breathe outside, women are subjugated, but we still have recognizable modern conveniences and a space program. The story follows a group of women who steal a space ship (don't worry they're qualified but pushed out) with the goal to find a new habitable home to colonize.

The science is smart and the characters and plot are well-written and nicely developed. If you are not usually a sci-fi person but like a a strong female cast this is a good choice.

Really interested in this book. I'm almost halfway through. I received a physical copy from Goldsboro GSFF after receiving the free e-arc. I can't wait to continue.

It starts off slow and kind of dense, but once the action begins, it's hard to resist the story as it drives forward. It reads as a true epic, one that makes you feel the world really has been reshaped as you read it. Would recommend.

GOLDILOCKS is a very well-written, engaging science fiction novel. The pitch suggests "The Martian meets The Handmaids Tale", which is not a bad comp - it's packed with accessible science, and it's set in an increasingly-repressive future where women are ever-more controlled and oppressed.

The novel tells the story of a group of women who decide to take it upon themselves to help save the human race. Lam's prose and characterization are excellent, and it's an engaging story throughout. If you haven't read anything by Lam, yet, I'd recommend you pick this up ASAP. Very good.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

Wow. Just wow.
This story just about blew me away with the raw humanness of the characters, the terrible conflicting problems they faced and the oh-so-relatable insecurities and flaws they experienced.
Is the space story good? Yes. I like a good space story, warp drives and star ships and other planets, and this was well done.

Is the political preaching a bit heavy? Just a bit. It's like the show Black Mirror; it makes you terrified for the future of humanity while also making you really think about what we're all doing on this planet. I even did some research on a few of the points that were brought up and I learned some things. Overall, I liked it. I don't mind a story making me feel a little uneasy. It's pretty traditional for sci-fi to take a stance on the state of humanity as it predicts the future based on current events.

Are the characters amazing? Yes. So amazing. They are real and human and multi-dimensional and surprising. My heart hurt for these (imaginary) people and the terrible not-so-imaginary problems they faced. Their lives drew me in and kept me involved into the wee hours of the night.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book, in fact, I'm going to do that right now.
Read it.

I am a fan of anything that is end of the world, post-apocalyptic, etc. I was really looking forward to this one, as the premise sounds like a bunch of awesome women fighting the end of the world and stealing spaceships to rescue humanity. Although I did enjoy those aspects, I do wish that more of this book had been more nuanced and less of a spoon feeding of "I hate men and governments are corrupt!" I like for there to be nuance and gray areas in my literature, and this one was just very blunt and spelled everything out for the reader. It was well written, I didn't dislike it, it just won't be a standout read for me this year. Thank you to Netgalley for sending me this book for review! I'm glad I got the chance to read it.

The current president is a total douche and kicks all the women astronauts that have been training for years and years off the spaceship to Cavendish, so they steal the ship when nobody is looking and just go. Backstabbing and overthrowing ensue!

Lots of depth in this book and I enjoyed it immensely. Has a bit of a happy ending which I’m not sure how I feel about. This is definitely my favorite science fiction this year so far. This is a new voice and I’m excited to see what comes next.

This is a sci-fi, space voyage with one distinct difference from usual; it’s all women. No men need apply. As a female this excited me to see female astronauts steal a spaceship and try to ‘save’ all of humanity. Unfortunately, as is often the case, Laura Lam takes it a bit too far. By the end of the book I was so over all of these women, discussion of fertility and babies, and their giant space egos. Proving that gender holds no sway over how confident someone is in their own opinion being right.

Future set-up
This is a future vision of Earth where a version of Trump is US president, and boy does this guy hate women. He’s systematically removing us ladies from positions of power, or even from working at all. Thus we have five women who bond together to steal a spaceship and take over a mission to find sustainable life on another planet (as Earth is nearly toast). And so begins the non-stop feminist agenda. It’s a rhetoric that doesn’t work for me personally. I believe all types of people and personalities are needed to build a cohesive team; especially one that is manning a five-person spaceship to find humanity a new Earth-like planet.

Babies
Someone might accuse me of jealousy here based on what I’m about to say. I’m okay with that, as it might very well be true. I doubt I would have picked this book up if the blurb had made it clear that a large focus of the story would be about re-population, pregnancy in space, and babies/children in general. As a childless woman, sort of by choice (I have medical constraints and chose not to pursue surgery, IVF, etc), I love real life tiny babies, am okay with toddlers and kids until about 7-years-old. Then I’d rather handle a 16-year-old as I have difficulty relating to middle grade children.
When a book throws at me an obsession with whose had a baby and when, especially if I’m not prepared for it, then I tend to shy away. This is where Handmaiden’s Tale influences come into place in Goldilocks. I think there are some interesting concepts to develop here; but I just wish it was a lot less of the story.

New Planet and Warp Technology
I’d have rather focused on the science of what is needed for a new planet similar to Earth for us all to move to. There is some context; like growing food, different length of a day, sky being a different colour, etc. But mostly it’s fairly vague.
Secondly I’d have rather focused on how and why the warp drive works that makes them faster than the speed of light. And while I realize this is fictional I like getting into some of the nitty gritty dirt of these types of scientific ideas or concept.

Overall
Thus it's 3 stars for Goldilocks because the blurb was a bit misleading. I was wanting to read some space cowboys with women; not about too much estrogen in the bloodstream and how a woman may handle that in space and not babies in space. If that interests you then you'll probably really enjoy this. If you are looking for a solid space travel book, or the way to find a new planet for humans this is an okay book; if you want a fun space cowboy story you will not find it here.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

I absolutely loved this book! The balance of sci-fi and adventure was done very well. I was hooked from page 1!

This book is so claustrophobic and masterful. It's almost entirely female-powered, despite the sinister political maneuverings of men in the background, who are subtly (and sometimes overtly) removing women from public and professional spaces. The characters in this book are well-rounded and feel realistic. Given that this book is almost entirely set on a spaceship, with some flashbacks to a severely damaged Earth, it's startling how realistic the book feels.

(LGBT reads*) GOLDILOCKS by Laura Lam

In some ways, I think of Lam’s GOLDILOCKS as a spiritual successor to Naomi Alderman’s THE POWER and Meg Howrey’s THE WANDERERS (not to be confused with Chuck Wendig’s 2019 tome). Howrey’s and Alderman’s books are perhaps a bit more voice-y, where Lam’s book leans into stylistic brevity, but all three are cleverly written books tackling the ideas of gender, race, culture, and our responsibilities to others and the natural world. Unlike these others, however, Lam takes her characters beyond Mars and to an entirely new planet far from our solar system, reachable only with the perfection of the Alcubierre drive and its ability to warp spacetime. While GOLDILOCKS doesn’t spend much time explaining how the Alcubierre theory could work practically (not to mention the fifty+ reasons why it might *not* work), it does appear that Lam based the descriptions of the Atalanta spaceship on Dr. Harold G. White’s blueprints and Mark Rademaker’s conceptual artwork for a modified version of the drive as emplaced on a spaceship. (While originally developed by White, a NASA scientist, the concept for the IXS Enterprise is now owned by Limitless Space Institute.) it would appear from various details in the book and in its acknowledgments that Lam did the requisite research necessary to both plot the book and keep us space wonks happy. (Once we’re done bickering over the various hot takes on the Alcubierre theory, of course.) While it could be described, as one character states, as a kind of “grand theft spaceship,” this book is much more of a slow burn than such a summary would seem to hint at.

There are twists. There is plenty of drama. I rather like the close third person for this sort of novel, and I think Lam strikes just the right balance between scenic description, character development, dialogue, and sentence structure. I have some quibbles over how the book was marketed, and I could debate the scientific fallacies of the book’s tagline that “Earth is no longer in the habitable zone” line, but … it’s rather beside the point. GOLDILOCKS is an incredibly readable work of science fiction. I will simply pretend that the dust jacket doesn’t exist! And lo, I am a happy reader indeed.

*Even though I’m including GOLDILOCKS on my “LGBT reads” playlist, readers should know that queerness plays a very minor role in this book. It’s not exactly backgrounded, but the primary character merely observes it in her coworkers occasionally, and is not herself queer. If you’re looking for a book where LGBT issues are *foregrounded,* this is not that. It is, however, another lovely example of books in which queer identities and orientations merely … exist. There is also the merest hint of a mention of a larger conversation around the assignment of genders at birth, but it’s something I’d love to see more talk about in SFF as a whole.

Hmmm…. Goldilocks was interesting read, but I also found so many things lacking in the plot. What happened to the earth that women’s rights have been pretty much reversed how did that happen did no one make a fuss like not even a whimper I would like to believe that now a days women are more vocal in there autonomy. And why are men’s rights being at the forefront to this new planetary society. Also, what happened to the earth that we needed to seek out a new planet. What did humans do to cause rampant disease and the decay of earth. Was it war, nuclear? I think I would have enjoyed the read more and appreciated the message of the importance of climate change if I got more contexts to these questions. I still did enjoy the book and the diverse cast of the women on the spaceship and all the science featured. Overall Goldilocks questions our thinking on sexism and the importance of environmental awareness even if it has some plot holes.

Laura Lam’s new book Goldilocks takes readers into space with an all-female crew bound for a distant Earth-like planet.

The all-female crew isn’t the only twist; there’s also the fact that the five astronauts steal their spaceship.

The crew aren’t mere bandits, but the spacecraft’s original crew, who’d been shoved aside by a reactionary patriarchy intent on confining women to home and family.

“As a little girl, I thought sexism was on the way out. And in the last few years, I’ve realized, ‘Oh no, it’s definitely not,’” Lam tells in our conversation on New Books in Science Fiction, discussing her motivations to write the book.

When NASA confiscates the spacecraft of Valerie Black, a billionaire entrepreneur who Lam describes as a “cross between Elon Musk and Sigourney Weaver,” Black steals it back. She and her crew “know they’re the best people with the skills and training to find this new planet, which is humanity’s last hope because Earth has only 30 years left of habitability due to climate change,” Lam says.

Lam found inspiration in the unsung women who’ve played a role in the history of spaceflight, including the Mercury 13, a group of women who’d passed the same physiological tests as the seven men of the Mercury project in the late 1950s. “The Mercury 13 really helped me focus the book. … There are all these women who have been influential in space flight, but we still haven’t had a woman on the Moon,” Lam says.

It's interesting and always fun when you go into a novel knowing not much more than "space" and "that's a nice cover" only to find that it exceeded your most optimistic hopes. Folks, Goldilocks is fantastic! If you like rogue missions to colonize another planet, long space journeys, dying Earth stories, feminist dystopias, and just more space - you're likely to love Goldilocks as much as I did.

The publisher describes Goldilocks as a "bold and thought provoking new thriller for readers of The Martian and The Handmaid's Tale" and while the Andy Weir comparison seems more to say "spaaaaaace" and not much more, it is really the feminist dystopia that is the underpinning of Goldilocks, of the rights and expectations gradually stripped away day by day. Margaret Atwood is the big budget comparison, but Goldilocks hits the power and fear of more modern dystopias such as Red Clocks and Before She Sleeps (among many others). We can see how close we are to the edge, how few nudges it would take for the United States to start stripping rights away - and that's what Laura Lam is working around, why it was important for those women to steal the spaceship.

Goldilocks flips between the voyage and various events back before the launch. It's absolutely engrossing and I highly recommend Goldilocks.

Goldilocks is a somewhat harrowing look at a potential future scenario that I could seem to put down! I love sci-fi titles that explore the idea of leaving earth to colonize in space and this was no exception. My biggest issues with the book was the slightly uneven pacing of the narrative and plot of the story, but overall I really had a great time exploring this new world and concept!

I have to say is Goldilocks is the real deal. Smart, funny, and creative. Goldilocks is the newest novel from the mind of Laura Lam. And honestly, I couldn’t be happier about picking this novel up. I’ve been really craving something like this lately, but I hadn’t been able to put it into words until now. I wanted an action packed scifi with a healthy sense of comedic relief and character building. I got all of that here. I enjoyed reading this story, although I agree with other reviewers that it hits a little close to home in many ways. Since I'm no scientist, I don't read sci-fi for accuracy, but felt like there were some possible issues with a few technical areas; they just seemed too convenient but not necessarily correct.

"Change is slow. Utopias are lies."

Despite those small issues, I think it was a great read, with moral issues to consider, and the climate change focus is especially relevant.

I am not normally a reader of science fiction, I am more of an avid reader of fantasy and urban fantasy. This book is well-written. I enjoy the humor as well as the research that the author put in to make everything work.