Holdout by Jeffrey Kluger

Book Review

If you had the opportunity to go to space, would you go?? I definitely would! Which is part of the reason I love reading books that take place in space. 🚀

Thank you Dutton Books for this gifted copy!

Holdout tells the story of a female astronaut who defies orders to evacuate the international space station after a life-threatening freak accident. When her crew-mates abandon ship, American astronaut “Walli” Beckwith claims she would “prefer not to,” and instead stays behind to pursue a political mission. Meanwhile, the Brazilian government is setting the Amazon rainforest ablaze in an effort to push out local tribes and clear the land for development. Facing criminal charges in 36 countries, Walli refuses to leave her post aboard the international space station until the United States government agrees to intervene in Brazil and help stop the destruction of the rainforest.

While I found the premise of the book incredibly intriguing (and loved the idea of a female astronaut protagonist), there were a number of things that felt a bit eyebrow-raising to me. For instance, I didn’t understand how Walli was able to survive aboard the space station after it was severely damaged. Clearly the incident that caused the other astronauts to leave was drastic enough that the station was deemed an unsafe environment for astronauts…. yet she stays behind and fares just fine, despite not making any major structural repairs. Not to mention, both her crew mates were critically injured in the accident and required medical attention, yet she conveniently didn’t face the same fate.

There was also a racially insensitive comment at the beginning of the book about Walli’s niece, an American missionary in the Amazon, that implied she didn’t “look American” because of her brown skin… 😳😖🤦🏼‍♀️

I almost stopped reading after the aforementioned problematic comment, but decided to push through, as I HATE DNFing books and was curious to see how the book would end. Ultimately, I found it mostly predictable and far less thrilling than I hoped.

⭐️⭐️💫/5