🚀 To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage
4⭐️ | Queer lit • Indigenous rep • Messy ambition

This one had so much potential, like Cherokee rep, queer coming of age, NASA dreams, but the execution left me torn. Steph’s journey to become the first Cherokee astronaut is raw, messy, and full of heartbreak… but also a bit chaotic.

She’s ambitious, selfish, and sometimes hard to root for, which I do respect, but I struggled to connect with her. The NASA details? Not always accurate, and that took me out of it as a space nerd. Loved the creativity in structure (POV shifts, journal entries, dating profiles 👏), but the pacing dragged and some characters vanished mid book without closure.

Still, this is a bold, genre bending debut that dives deep into identity, culture, family, and the cost of chasing your dreams. Not perfect, but important.

Worth reading if you like complex characters, emotional journeys, and books that don't tie things up with a neat little bow.

Thank you to NetGalley, Eliana Ramage, and Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster for the eARC of this book.

“To the Moon and Back” by Eliana Ramage is a novel that explores aspirations, identity, belonging, and the complexity of relationships. The story follows Steph as she endeavors to become the first Cherokee astronaut in space. Told from alternating points of view, the novel spans decades and takes readers around the globe.

Ultimately, this coming-of-age story emphasizes themes of family, resilience, and self-discovery during the 2000s. It focuses on the journey of finding oneself and one's place in the world (or beyond it). Ramage delves into themes of colonization, heartbreak, and ambition. The narrative is less about space and more about the people on Earth, their complex relationships, and the struggles they face.

I would recommend this book to fans of authors like Tara Reid, Tommy Orange, Kyle Edwards, and Aaron John Curtis. Thank you to Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Steph is determined to be the first Cherokee astronaut in space and this book follows her coming of age tale. I think readers are going to love this inspiring novel from Eliana. This book is unique and interesting and despite that, I had a hard time rating this one. I appreciate the work the author put into this and it is well crafted but personally I didn't enjoy it as much as I wish I did.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avid Reader Press | Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster for access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really appreciated the cultural context and NASA background this had! Despite some parts feeling a little unbelievable, I found it interesting and enlightening. The writing style flowed naturally and it was a pretty quick read!

Unfortunately this one wasn't for me - I didn't really relate or particularly like any of the characters, and some of the romance scenes felt overly graphic than needed? Maybe I just wasn't expecting it because it wasn't categorized as a romance genre or mentioned in the synopsis, but it felt a little out ofplace and unexpected.

I think this story offers a lot of important life lessons but I just wasn't the ideal reader for this one. Thank you for the ARC!

To the Moon and Back was a book that I was really looking forward to reading, based on the synopsis. I had watched Nicole Aunapu Mann launch to the International Space Station as commander of SpaceX Crew 5, and as a full-fledged space geek, had regularly tuned in for EVAs and astronaut interviews. Sadly, the book didn’t live up to my expectations. Some of them were high, based on my knowledge of NASA and the astronaut program. Others were lower and were based on the storytelling itself.

I loved the premise of telling of a journey of a Native American woman to achieve her dream of becoming an astronaut. In her author’s note at the end, Ramage acknowledges that she took creative license when accuracy didn’t fit the story, which I’m fine with. But there were several things that were not accurate that I wasn’t fine with. I have a hard time believing there’s any way that Steph, the protagonist, would have passed the rigorous personality tests and assessments that are done on candidates. And I don’t believe she could have successfully faked her way through them. NASA requires that candidates must have a STEM background to be considered, but their personality, teamwork skills, and ability to take direction and follow instructions are a paramount part of the qualifications and Steph is pretty much the antithesis of what they are looking for. She’s self-absorbed, reckless, breaks the rules and seems to spend an exorbitant amount of time worrying about her next hookup, and whether a woman she’s attracted to is also gay so that the possibility of hooking up is still an option. When it’s not a casual fling she tends to mow the women over, with complete disregard for their own feelings and interests.

Also inaccurate and unnecessary to change for story purposes is that there would have been launches within six weeks of each other in 2017 (the Soyuz was the only ship launching to the station at this time, the Shuttle had been retired and Dragon did not send a crewed demo mission until 2020). It’s also incredibly unlikely that an astronaut would have had more than three missions within the span of ten years, let alone four. Missions during this period were usually six months with an 18-24 training period beforehand. An astronaut would be essentially going straight from completing a mission with no debriefing and recovery straight into training for their next mission. The astronaut core is way too large for this to happen, even if one got added to a mission later in the training process.

Off my unnecessarily inaccurate soapbox, the personal side of this story was a mess too. The characters are hard to like, see above for a description of Steph. Her sister Kayla isn’t any better in a different way. She tends to get so wrapped up in herself and her latest cause or pursuit that she doesn’t consider that others around her don’t feel the same way, and much of it feels performative more than passionate, which has additional consequences for her loved ones.

The story swings back and forth. The first half of the book is almost more about Steph and the first women she has a serious relationship with, two people who don’t seem to be good at sharing truths with each other, and one who disappears entirely for the second half of the book (with the exception of a minor appearance) after having part of the book told from her POV. There’s no explanation for her disappearance, she and Steph are just no longer together after she gives up a great career opportunity to follow Steph to Russia. This isn’t really unexpected, but with the time Ramage spends to build out their relationship it feels like the reader is owed the courtesy of the collapse as it happens.

Then the middle of the book shifts to mostly a format of blog and social media posts and journal entries mixed in, before moving away from this back to primarily Steph telling the story. It feels so inconsistent.

The book isn’t about Steph and her relationship with Della, because that ends halfway through. It’s not entirely about Steph’s dogged pursuit of becoming an astronaut, because the first half really only hints at that. It could be about Steph’s actualization and growth as a person to be able to achieve her dream, but while she realizes that she’s screwed things up and apologizes for them, I don’t see major character growth. I feel like this book is trying to tell too many different stories that aren’t blended together well, with a protagonist that doesn’t work in the role she’s in. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

3.5 stars rounded up!

I had much more mixed feelings about this than I anticipated, but I still think it's a very well-done and important book if not a great match for me personally.

Steph Harper knows that she will become the first Cherokee astronaut but there's a lot between her and the moon including the loved ones she might mow down in the process. I was so ready to love this. I love stories about astronauts and all of the politics that goes on inside NASA, so I was kind of expecting this to be reminiscent of the Lady Astronaut Series by Marie Robinette Kowal. There is a lot that this book does well. While the characters are definitely not the best people, they do feel very real and flawed in human ways. I can't speak to the indigenous experience but the ways that Steph, Della, and Kayla felt about their identities and how their relationship with their roots changed over the course of the book were very familiar to me. In particular, Steph associating a lot of shame with her ancestry and trying to distance herself from it because of her ambitions was too true and difficult to read. That college essay was one of the strongest and most shocking parts of the book.

I think this might have been too slow-paced for me. Even when there are big time-jumps, it feels like actual plot events progress very slowly. There also wasn't a lot about Steph's experience at NASA, dealing with all of the elitism and general politics that go on there. Her training really falls to the wayside. I had trouble rooting for Steph and Kayla, partially because they are at times really unlikable and I can't understand their motivations. Steph being selfish and ambitious would make sense for her character, but when we see her from an outside perspective like in Della's chapter, she just comes off as kind of aloof and detached from reality. She does something towards the middle of the novel that has some really horrible fallout and I just never understood why she was taking the risk in the first place. To resolve said terrible choice she does something else horrible to Kayla and her daughter (even if Kayla deserved it) and I thought for sure this would be a big thing in the rest of the novel but it's not even mentioned again until the very end. Della also is one of the main characters in the first half of the novel and yet is completely forgotten about for most of the rest of it.

This left me very frustrated, but I think based off of other reviews that it might be more due to me as a reader than issues with the book, so I think it's still worth a shot particularly if you like slower-paced stories with flawed characters and don't care that much about the astronaut part of this premise.

Thank you to Eliana Ramage and Avid Reader Press for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!

Happy reading!

A slow burning, albeit brightly shining, book. This is a poignant coming out, coming of age, and self-discovery novel that follows the main character, Steph. Determined to be the first Cherokee person to be an astronaut, she will stop at nothing to do so. We see her progress from early on in life and we learn more about her identities as a queer, indigenous, first-generation, woman. Make sure that you read this!

The writing is great and love how the author used different point of views, posts, and other ways to tell the story. There are parts that included a bit more detail than I cared for, but I do appreciate the author inserting information for context and to set the stage. I felt that topics/themes were introduced and thoroughly fleshed out and are highly relevant. I didn’t feel the author inserted issues or identities just because of a trend, but rather were raw and what one can expect in life. The author keeps it true in her storytelling (and not make it seem like everything is ok, sometimes it’s not!).

At the end, I did feel it rushed just a bit. We get to see Steph go to space and somewhat reflect on her journey there but I wonder what happened after? Did she come down, be famous, etc.?

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This will absolutely be one of my favorite books I've read in 2025. A coming of age story following Steph, a girl who dreams of one day becoming the first Cherokee astronaut in space, the novel spans across decades of her life. The character building coupled with the complicated mother/daughter relationship and understanding cultural heritage made this a book I couldn't put down.

This book is incredible. The mental and emotional tug of war Steph goes through during the whole story between her relationships, her culture and her dream of going to space is truly captivating. There was so much a reader could relate to. I so deeply appreciate the amount of research that went into this book.

I'm going to be the outlier here. When I read the description, I did not realize that this is a lesbian love story. Some of the detailed sex descriptions made me uncomfortable (very graphic hetro scenes can do the same sometimes). It was also drawn out, longer than it had to be, because of these scenes.

I did really love other parts of the story: what it takes to get into NASA (both organizations with that acronym), mother-daughter / family relationships, the importance of cultural heritage and knowing one's story. I also loved the way it came full circle at the end. This is the reason for three stars and not less.

I received an advance copy of this book and it began with reviews and quotes from other authors and writers (and an executive editor). The missing punctuation and space bands in this section was so bad that I made me "worry" about the rest of the book. Happily, the author, an MFA, did a better job than the "professionals". If this section is included in the final version, I sincerely hope that it is cleaned up.

can I say this extraordinary? the characters development is amazing and I love that how the author able to build them.
The writing easy to read and I think personally this book kinda unique.
Overall I love it <3

Propulsive story about a woman who from childhood will sacrifice anything to qualify for astronaut training, a later, a space mission. It’s about sacrifice, family conflict, and identity. Thanks to Netgalley for the ebook ARC. It barely falls short of 5 stars for me because of length. I think some passages could have been cut without sacrificing the story.

A story through years of an Indian girl who longs to be an astronaut. Interesting story with lots about native Americans.

Eliana Ramage’s TO THE MOON AND BACK is my favorite book of the year (and it hasn’t even come out yet! Thank you, NetGalley, for the arc).

From a young age, Steph is determined to be the first Cherokee astronaut in space. I love a story that spans many years. The early chapters address Steph’s childhood in Oklahoma. We follow her to college and beyond, and across several continents. While the story addresses many complex themes like mother-daughter relationships, identity, home, and sexuality, it’s also full of weird, fun adventures. For example, when Steph’s mom can’t afford real space camp, she creates Cherokee “space camp,” which, of course, surly young Steph hates. It’s an odd and funny part of the book, but it also portrays the complexities of motherhood. As a mother of a daughter, I was extremely touched. Each chapter was filled with this type of emotional complexity.

The writing is gorgeous. The character development is absurdly strong. I couldn’t predict what would happen, but when it did happen, it always felt exactly right. I also appreciate Ramage’s unique genre-bending. Several chapters are told from her girlfriend Della’s point of view. One chapter is told through dating profiles. It’s all very clever and fun!

This is an incredible debut. I can’t wait to read more work from Ramage.

I did not realize how dark this book was and I need to put it down for now.

That being said, the cover is lovely, and since I did not read or fully sample the eARC (I am incredibly grateful an additional description was provided for the book within the digital file itself, as I was able to see what the book was about before going in and get more of a sample, and the content is too heavy for me.)

Thank you so much for the opportunity to sample this eARC. I appreciate the opportunity to provide honest feedback. I plan to buy this book in stores when I have the funds

What a fantastic book! The first one I have read by this author but definitely can't wait to read more! The characters stay with you long after you finish the book. Highly recommend!