In the Quick

A Novel

By: Kate Hope Day

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

Good Morning America Buzz Pick

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” (Observer).

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Vulture and She Reads

“The female astronaut novel we never knew we needed.” (Entertainment Weekly)

June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention who leaves home to begin grueling astronaut training at the National Space Program. Younger by two years than her classmates at Peter Reed, the school on campus named for her uncle, she flourishes in her classes but struggles to make friends and find true intellectual peers. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space station - and a hard-won sense of belonging - but is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncle’s fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was 12 years old, and while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten the crew, June alone has evidence that makes her believe they are still alive.

She seeks out James, her uncle’s former protégé, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiry’s fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the relationship that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cell’s fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create - and any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive.

A propulsive narrative of one woman’s persistence and journey to self-discovery, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship, and the costs of human ingenuity.

©2021 Kate Hope Day (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“With echoes of Station Eleven, The Martian, and, yes, Jane Eyre, this is a gripping and unconventional novel with an unforgettable heroine.” (Observer)

“I read In the Quick with wonder at the deeply imaginative world Kate Hope Day created. Feminist and thrilling, this novel centers around a precocious, brilliant character named June. I happily followed June into deep space, but I would have followed her anywhere. What a wonderful story. I highly recommend this novel.” (Ann Napolitano, New York Times best-selling author of Dear Edward)

“Day’s descriptions of the cold lethality of space make the final frontier feel like a character itself, and, indeed, each location described feels tangible. The action sequences are brutal and breathtaking.... Perfect for fans of realistic depictions of space travel like Andy Weir’s The Martian [and] Jeremy K. Brown’s Zero Limit." (Booklist)

A Life Adventure

It was hard for me to stop listening to this book. It was well written and very well read. Didn’t particularly care for the ending but I really enjoyed the story.

Loved everything but the end

I loved the women characters in this book, particularly June. Rebecca Lowman the narrator was PERFECT. I could listen to her voice all day. I thought the end was disappointing - a little too relationship-focused. June was an intelligent, independent woman throughout the book. And at the most important moment in her life she’s thinking about a guy?

Not too good

The language is simple, the story is somewhat interesting to follow, but overloaded with unnecessary descriptions.

What in the heck is this

Was this actually written by a 12 year old? This is just a terrible book. Narration is annoying and dull, the story drags and every other word is my aunt or my uncle. 0.0

Disappointing, unfortunately

The author's first novel was excellent. She has a fine, engaging style, and she's very observant. This one starts well. But the plot becomes rather static and the characters uninteresting. The near-future society she describes doesn't fell authentic. The first person protagonist is meant to be a brilliant inventor, but the descriptions of her creating ideas and working through problems, alone or with others, lack depth. They're insufficiently imagined. It's ambitious for an author without any background in the sciences or engineering to attempt this, and unfortunately it doesn't work here. I think of Lost and Wanted, for instance, by Nell Freudenberger, also a novel from the perspective of an imagined female narrator in the hard sciences, which succeeds. Apart from that, the plot doesn't have enough of an arc -- it goes on for a while, and then just stops. Unsatisfying overall.