This was a DNF for me personally so I cannot review it in its totality. What didn't work for me was the overall pacing as well as the general writing style. I have read Day's writing before and I'm thinking her work just may not be for me. Thank you for the opportunity to try this one out!

In Day’s book “In the Quick” we meet a young woman who lost her scientist/astronaut father recently. To cope with the loss, she begins taking things apart in order to see how they function, takes so much apart that her guardian decides to send her to a special school for gifted youths. There she meets other peers, is assigned to a group of young scientists, several of which worked with her father, who she not so secretly believes is still alive somewhere in space.

This was a strange book that I was surprised to find interesting despite all the technical details where the narrator and her geeky friends are taking apart metal objects to create energy. There were holes in the plot leading me to feel deprived by the ending, and is why I give this book a rating equivalent of “eh”. There’s a ton of forward moving but where’s the action? Climax? I mainly felt like I was floating around without a real destination. In other words, aside from missing her father, there wasn’t much else moving the narrative forward.
Then again, there are certain readers for certain books and in this case I might’ve not been the best reader for this one.

This was so weird! I like some sections, didn't like others. I must have started and stopped this and started it again a hundred times. The pacing was a little strange and the narration style was Very strange. Kind of reminded me of Normal People? Maybe I should have waited for the audiobook for this. It was ultimately ok, but I didn't love it as much as I was hoping too. I just didn't connect to what was going on all that well.

In The Quick follows the story of June, a young girl who we first meet when she is a clever and precocious 12 year old who worships her uncle, who is a scientist at the National Space Program. Due to the death of her uncle, she is forced to enrol in a training program for potential astronauts. Around this time, a space crew is stranded during a mission and eventually presumed dead. This situation becomes a continued focus for June, as the failure of that mission is blamed on issues with her uncle's fuel cell technology. As June travels to the Pink Planet for her first space mission, we find that June is fixated on perfecting her uncle's technology and learning whether the stranded astronauts are still alive.

I'd previously read Kate Hope Day's If, Then and so I was quite excited to read this novel. It didn't quite meet my expectations, but I did enjoy it overall. I think that I'd rate it at 3.5 for its interesting story about June but then the story just seemed to fizzle at the end.

Thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Random House for an opportunity to read an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

So I think that the synopsis/description of this book did the book itself a great disservice. "A young, ambitious female astronaut’s life is upended by a love affair that threatens the rescue of a lost crew in this brilliantly imagined novel “with echoes of Station Eleven, The Martian, and, yes, Jane Eyre” - but.....this is not the point of the novel! She's not that ambitious, her life is not upended by a love affair, the love affair does not really threaten the rescue of the crew, and it DEFINITELY is not like Station Eleven... It makes me crazy when publishers do this type of jacket copy, and it shouldn't have anything to do with my review of the book, except that it sets expectations for a book that it ultimately, is not. The synopsis made such a big deal about her love affair with James, which I don't think is a spoiler to say is a very small, and ultimately unimportant part of the book. The book would have been the same (*whispers* maybe better) without the love affair, because the interesting parts were the space/math/science stuff - words I honestly thought I would never say.

I found this to be the unique type of book that while I was reading it, I found it hard to put down, and it was a very quick page turner. Once I set it down though, it quickly lost my interest and I found it hard to pick back up. I think the good writing and the very interesting character of June kept my interest but ultimately, the plot was a little bit of a let-down.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3754541070

I went into this book with such high hopes and for me it really just fell short. I went into this book looking for a strong female lead who engages in so many adventures and a strong love story and thats not quite what I got. This book was honestly just not for me, The writing style was long boring and difficult to read. I felt like there were way too much details and not much of the storyline to keep you interest and wanting to read more. The sex scenes felt very forced for me and I wanted to put it down about 80% through. Space is such an intersting place, but this was NOT an interesting book. I wish it had gone so many other places.

This book was absolutely not what I expected, and I really enjoyed it. This is both science fiction and a character study, and I really loved June’s way of looking at the world.

If you want world building and lots of action, this isn’t your book, but in its own, character driven way, it is a beautiful story of obsession and perseverance.

While I was so excited to read this book, it unfortunately wasn't for me. In the Quick tried to straddle two of my favorite genres, literary and sci-fi, but didn't excel at either. There were so many unanswered questions about the logic that proved to be impossible for me to ignore. In what world would the US government allow astronauts to just pop over to planets for their own mental health, or for an astronaut to be alone on a planet for extended periods?
I was also very distressed that one of the characters held another character hostage for like ... a while and he never faces any consequences.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. I wasn't able to connect with the characters and did not finish so I won't be leaving a full review.

I was really interested and excited about this book but ultimately it didn't work for me. I liked the approach, a 12 year old girl interested in science and following her uncle's career, but she came off as a bit of a know-it-all after starting out inquisitive. The formatting didn't really work for me, the lack of quotation marks was distracting and made it difficult to separate the conversation from the point of view the rest of the story is told in.

Cover of the year? Cover of the year.
✨
June Reed is 12 when she watches the world receive news of a failure in the fuel cells of the Inquiry, the longest crewed space mission ever launched from Earth. June spent her childhood observing the design of the cells by her beloved uncle & his students, a quiet witness to the process of how things work. After his death, she enters the academy for the National Space Program—too young, alone in the world, but a savant in her own right & driven by her uncle’s failure and the conviction that the Inquiry’s crew can still be saved.

IN THE QUICK is a tense and moody space novel that leans into the innate sexiness of scientific discovery and the anxiety that is the only sane response to plunging our sacks of flesh and bone into the vast indifferent vacuum of space.

Kate Hope Day takes the gorgeous sparseness of her debut and raises it by an order of magnitude here. I was intrigued in the first third or so, but struggling to find purchase in the story. Despite a close 1st-person narrative, June is an inscrutable character, the kind of impotent in her situation that stresses me the fuck out to read. Then I got into Part 2 & the stakes became clearer. From the halfway point on, I was loathe to put it down and break the spell.

IN THE QUICK sits in the sweet spot where scifi meets literary fiction, but otherwise probably benefits from little expectation (publisher’s synopsis included). It’s got an ethereal quality, & at the end I still had some unanswered questions. But I enjoyed the writing enough not to be too fussed by them. Consider it if you love minimalist world-building in speculative fiction, thinking about humans in space, and some light mystery.

This one vibed heavily for me along the lines of Do You Dream of Terra-Two, Contact, & Space Camp, but those could be chiefly personal resonances, so I’m curious what you thought if you’ve picked it up!
✨
Thanks to @delreybooks @randomhouse and @netgalley for the advance copy

Book review: 'In the Quick' an out-of-this-world, feminist astronaut tale
By ASHLEY RIGGLESON FOR THE FREE LANCE–STAR Apr 17, 2021
I loved Kate Hope Day’s début novel, “If, Then,” so I was eager to get my hands on her sophomore novel, a feminist astronaut tale called “In the Quick.”

The story begins with a plucky heroine named June, a child who is reeling from the death of her uncle. Her uncle, an engineer for the space program, has clearly passed his passion on to June. And when a ship known as the Inquiry gets lost in outer space with some of her uncle’s malfunctioning equipment on board, June becomes obsessed with a possible rescue mission. While the adults in June’s life are quick to dismiss the idea and June is soon occupied with other things—she attends a boarding school that teaches her how to live and work in outer space—June holds on to the idea of saving the astronauts, convinced they are still alive.

Early praise for this book has called it a “genre bending novel,” and rightfully so. “In the Quick” is part bildungsroman, part science fiction and part romance. I would say that each of these disparate parts were executed with different degrees of success.

I found that Day had particular skill when it came to writing the coming-of-age portion of the text. I was immediately invested in June’s flawed but humane character and rooting throughout her childhood was enough to carry this novel forward.

In all fairness, discussing science fiction is not my forte, but these elements were well handled, too. I could follow the descriptions of the technology, and Day’s world building is so intricate as to make all the leaps seem possible.

The romance made me a little uncomfortable, however. Despite the clear chemistry between the characters and Day’s obvious attempts to make readers comfortable with the relationship, this aspect of the plot was a little discomfiting for me.

The fast plot and compelling characters more than make up for any complaints. I loved following June in her adventures. Her persistence in the face of adversity and her resourcefulness in overcoming obstacles made me truly admire her. The ending is quite satisfying, too, and Day shows us that June’s persistence has its own rewards.

Ashley Riggleson is a freelance writer from Rappahannock County.

This Review was originally published in the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this novel!

DNF

I knew pretty early on that this wasn't the book for me. One of my bookish pet peeves is books with no quotation marks, so this just didn't work for me at all, though I totally understand why someone would love this!

So, I think I've learned that I love *space* things, but maybe only in a visual format. This book, IN THE QUICK, is ostensibly a *space* book, but perhaps because I'm not smart enough, I had no idea what was going on really, and therefore it had trouble holding my attention. It has a fantastic plot, reminded me a bit of THE MARTIAN, and has a fun alternate history vibe, however Day's writing is a bit too dense for my liking. Maybe it would have clicked with me more if I was a bit more science-y!

June is an astronaut who believes that some astronauts believed lost on a prior space mission are still alive. She joins a new mission during which the crew faces problems from a design flaw.

This book was science fiction lite, bogged down with mundane details. Way too much time was spent on June’s childhood and education. Finally, she gets into space, but then there is more mundane detail. Also don’t believe the blurb about an “electric attraction”. June and James have one unnecessary sex scene at around the 78% point of the book. It was kind of embarrassing (if a tongue can part your legs, that is a very strong tongue). The story doesn’t really end. The book just stops. This book was a disappointment.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Lack of quotations as a creative decision bothered me. I hate that. It makes the flow off and you have to figure out if someone is talking. Meh. I don't understand the purpose of it. And this book just did not do it for me. It didn't go anywhere. I liked precocious June, I thought was was intended for great things but it was all just very dull. I liked how detailed Day went into how astronauts adapt in space and what really happens to the body, she clearly did her research, but other than that, it was boring. I also wanted her to touch about menstruation in space because hello, men make it out to be a big deal and I really wanted some details about whether June got her period, whether it was staved off because of her body's changes in space, that kind of thing. Because Rachel, Theresa, Amelia, and June were all women in space. Even just a sentence about it! But yeah, I wasn't impressed. I wanted it to be more exciting. I'll give her other book a chance, a different kind of science fiction.

An interesting book. I'm fascinated by space travel, and I love the Martian, so that's why I chose this book. I thought that there were some odd decisions about what to include and not include, though. For instance, the main character, June, in the middle of the book is all of the sudden on the Pink Planet, and we get no description of the launch and travel to get her there or the decision-making of the powers that be in the NSP to send her. Similarly, later in the book, her co-astronauts have made contact with the missing expedition, the driving problem that June seeks to solve the entire book. But it happens off screen and without her help, as she's pulling out an infected molar and planting seedlings on the pink planet.

The first third of the book, when June is a student at the space academy is by far the best part. Oddly, the magic of that section was abandoned when she went into space.

Also, since perhaps the publisher will see this review, please stop this trend of writing dialogue without quotation marks! Press authors not to do this, even if they insist! Especially for books that are marketed to a wide audience! This may seem like a picky thing, but it is vital to a reader's understanding, and therefore enjoyment of a book.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.

A mix of Jane Eyre meets The Martian, In The Quick is a speculative reimagining of a literary classic. So many things about this story were incredible, but unfortunately the pacing was all over the place for me and a lot of the dialogue felt clunky and awkward. My expectations were so high that I may have let myself down with this one.

June is a young, brilliant girl who leaves home to attend an astronaut training program. Her uncle was an engineer who developed fuel cells that powered a groundbreaking space ship named Inquiry. After six years of grueling training, June becomes an astronaut and is assigned to a post as an engineer on a space station. June is obsessed with solving the mystery of what happened to Inquiry and to find out if the fuel cells her uncle invented were to blame for this ship’s disappearance.
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I’ve always enjoyed sci-fi, but I haven’t read it as much as I did when I was younger. But I enjoyed this dreamy, atmospheric novel that was both scientific in nature and yet, it was about a young woman who had the courage to brave space travel in order to solve a mystery of a missing space craft and its crew. June is a memorable, courageous character. I found the descriptions of what happens to the human body during space travel fascinating and the descriptions of June on the Pink Planet were riveting. And the cover of this book is beautiful.
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In The Quick is an interesting, unique read. It’s a short book that I read in a day and I loved it because it took me back to a genre that I enjoyed so much. I loved it, but I do recognize that this story may only appeal to certain readers. I just saw the movie, The Martian, a few weekends ago and this book did remind me of that movie in parts. If you want a different read out of your comfort zone, this is a great book to read!

I've been procrastinating on this review because this book has been highly anticipated after I loved this author's first book, If, Then.

If I had realized this was intended to be Jane Eyre meets The Martian I may have gone in with more caution. It's just a taste thing - I overwhelmingly dislike retellings. They often force the author to make the characters do things that don't make sense for them in honor of the larger form, and that might explain some of the choices here. To me there were too many unbelievable things in what felt practically present day (but couldn't be) and a strange lack of intelligence and oversight by those I would expect to have it while the child who shouldn't be that smart seems to have no limits.

Such a good cover though.