Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 rounded up!
I'm majorly delayed in getting around to some of my NetGalley ARCs from 2023 due to personal reasons so apologies for that 😩

I was so excited to get the ARC of this book as I loved Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin and this one sounded right up my street too!
I did enjoy this novel, it was quick and easily bingeable read but it lacked a little something that I can't quite put my finger on.
If you love character driven novels and can relate with weird, neurodivergent women you'll love this one.

Everyone in this room will someday be dead was one of my favourite books so naturally Interesting facts about space was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. Sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations. It's not that it was a bad book, not at all. But I think because her previous book had SUCH an impact, this one almost fell a bit flat in comparison. I would still highly recommend it to everyone.

I loved this! Autistic women will definitely see themselves in this novel, which is both sad and positive in a way that only Emily Austin could bring to life.

I love Emily Austin's writing so much!! She really captures something special and unique and this book is no different. Will be recommending it no doubt !

This book deserves more buzz! It was a fun, quirky, and engaging character-driven book about a woman, Enid. She is neurodivergent, obsesses about true crime stories about serial killers, has a phobia about bald men, and avoids intimacy in her relationships. She learns a great deal about herself and learns to accept herself throughout the book. This could have easily become cloying or cliched but the writing made it very enjoyable. Four very strong stars!

A really cute and quirky novel!
This was so enjoyable. I need a light read to escape the thrillers I read, and this suited the bill perfectly.
The characters were funny, the dating was hilarious and the protaganist stays in your head for ages.

An enjoyable and quick read - perfect for those who like to read books that are equal parts funny and sad.

This book was EXCELLENT, so very readable, I found myself wanting to keep reading long after I should have gone to bed, which is the best indication for a good book. I liked Enid a lot, she was very well developed and you got such a good sense of her character. I wasn't expecting the turn this book took in terms of being a mystery with much darker aspects explored, but i'm not mad at it at all. I do think the cover and marketing of this blurb is misleading, people may go in thinking its more of a lighthearted, feel-good book, when in fact it gets dark and goes deep into the psychology of the character.
4.5 Stars

If you’ve read Austin’s first novel, this is more of the same absolute genius. No notes. The relationship between Enid and her mother was explored with a kind of frank tenderness that gave me chills while reading their interactions.

Enid was such a compelling character to follow, irrational but deeply empathetic and desperate to understand how others perceive her. An unreliable narrator at times, Enid led us into a compelling mystery where not everything was verified or challenged by side characters, leading to various satisfying reveals at the end.

This is a book best jumped into headfirst so I won’t give any more details away. But to reiterate, absolutely no notes and this was obviously a five star.

Thank you so much to the absolute wonders at Atlantic for sending this my way, it was inevitable that I would adore this as much as Everyone in this Room!

Ok so first off, this cover is a hate crime, and Emily Austin deserves better. I am tempted to take a star off for how much I hate it. But I won't - because it's a gorgeous, hopeful, eccentric read that deserves the world.

This is very much a character-driven novel, though it's punchy and fast-paced too. Enid, the narrator of Interesting Facts is gay, half-deaf, anxious, a serial dater and overprotective of her mom. She's trying to build a relationship with her stepsisters and balancing that with not hurting her mom's feelings. Also: she thinks someone might be following her. Also: she's afraid of bald men, works for NASA, and consumes far too many murder podcasts.

Her world is small; so, then is the cast of characters. We spend time with Enid's mum, Dawn - their relationship is a real highlight of the novel, it's so sweet but also really good at depicting the intense worry children can feel about unwell parents. Her friends adore her, and her sort-of squeeze, Polly, is a delightful foil to the kooky and fretful main character.

There is a *lot* going on in this one, but Austin manages to balance everything without the story feeling overstuffed. She relies heavily on the reader getting into Enid's head, which is mostly easy to do, as she's so easy to love and (mostly) pretty relatable.

Enid's behaviour gets weirder the more time we spend with her - the murder podcasts, the copy-and-paste breakup texts, the re-watching of her teenage self's Youtube videos as an act of self-harm. But she manages never to feel too outlandish, though I did have a few moments where I wanted to shake her. Mostly because she was reflecting some of the worst parts of my younger self's anxiety brain back at me!!

It's a self-aware novel; how could it not be with a main character this anxious and introspective? I think the Anxiety Girlies will find a lot of relate to in Enid, even if she is a depiction of thsoe feelings turned up to 11. Emily Austin has carved out an incredible niche in writing weird, queer mentally ill women that readers fall madly in love with. I will continue to read everything she writes!!

I couldn't have loved this more. Emily Austin is a fabulous writer. She really manages to get inside a character's head and explore their inner world. Brilliant.

i guess this one is for the true crime podcast girlies.

look, despite not having enjoyed Austin's previous novel, i approached<i> Interesting Facts about Space approached Interesting Facts about Space</i> with the best intentions. i really wanted to like it because i too am a neurodivergent lesbian<s> loser</s> with questionable tattoos who as a child was afraid that flushing the toilet would awake some sort of monster (when i came across that particular tidbit from enid's past i felt very seen). still, i could not get behind Austin's prosaic style, which consists in short chunks of text that amount to either whimsical one-note characters saying quirky things or clinical descriptions about, i don't know, washing up a plate, blinking, or whatever ("I try to scrub caked-on food off a fork. I apply a large squirt of dish soap directly to the utensil."). while i can sometimes can get behind this type of functional storytelling, Austin's prose lacks that edge that makes this detached style work (for me) in say Brandon Taylor's books. the mc, Enid, is yet another (tired) reiteration of the twenty-something mess that has become the standard in much of contemporary fiction (there are so many examples that they deserve their own subgenre:
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/153374.She_s_Not_Feeling_Good_at_All_Catastrofemale">she is not feeling good at all</a>). and Edin just reminds me far too much of the mc from Austin's previous, just swap in that one's obsession with death for a fixation on space. i'm sure that there is an audience for this book, i'm just not it. i hope this book will find its way to readers who'll be able to enjoy it in all of the ways i wasn't able to.

This book was a lovely read: bizarre and whimsical at some points, unflinchingly honest and earnest in others, it had a very immersive POV character in Emily. I read it across two days, pulled in by the charm of the book: there is something really endearing about the mix of dread and heartwarmth, quirks and authentic feeling that conveys well.

I was so excited to read this book having loved Emily Austin's previous novel 'Everyone in this room will someday be dead'. She's an author who has a real gift for laying bear on the page highly neurotic and emotionally troubled characters with both care and humour.

This book was really well-paced in terms of slowly revealing what sits behind Enid's troubled and troubling feelings and behaviour. There are really powerful conversations in this book about trauma, repression and recovery. I also particularly liked explorations of what children and parents do and don't owe each other, which were really refreshing. I loved the shorthand Enid had developed of sharing interesting facts about space with her mother instead of telling her she loved her.

I really recommend this book. Highly readable, very funny and with some profound things to say.

I was very excited to hear about this new release from Emily Austin, as I very much enjoyed her previous novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead. This book had the same vibes, the character was similarly odd, anxious and paranoid and struggling with her relationships to others and to herself. Probably autistic, though I don't think it was mentioned. I enjoyed this a little less than Austin's previous book, because there was a bit more plot in Everyone in this Room Will Someday be Dead. This book is mainly *vibes*

Thank you to Atlantic Books for this ARC!
This was my first time reading Emily Austin, and I am now so eager to pick up her other work. In other words - I loved this book! Enid knows a few things about herself: she's gay, she doesn't like bald men, and she loves discovering new interesting facts about space. When she starts to worry that she's being followed, she begins to spiral, just like the galaxies she's so fascinated by.
I flew through it in about a day: the way that Austin writes (wonderfully! relatably! even whimsically at times!) means that the pacing is quick and nothing ever drags. Enid is such a special main character to me; I adored the neurodivergent representation, even though at times her inner monologue felt so similar to my own that it was almost like looking in a mirror - scary, but a mark of how thoughtfully Austin has crafted this little slice of life. Nothing felt out of place, every strand and character tying together in lovely ways (that made me tear up on occasion, *see orange blanket*). Enid's relationship with her mum might be my favourite, but I also loved how her friendship with Vin developed throughout the novel. Claustrophobic in a seemingly deliberate way, the few central settings only heightened the overall atmosphere and texture of the book, making Enid's world feel truly (reluctantly, to her) lived in. I would recommend this to anyone who loves Austin's other novel and also to lovers of books about how strange the world is, and how strange we feel to be living in it. 4.5/5!

What a treat to be reading another book by Emily Austin! Enid is a lesbian, deaf in one ear & obsessed with space & true crime. She also has a phobia of bald people & compulsively watches the YouTube videos she made as a teenager but can’t delete because she lost the password. While she is seeing someone new & building a relationship with her half sisters, she also has a feeling that someone is following her.

Austin has a way of writing characters with such love and compassion that you can’t help but to root for them. Enid is clearly a person who is deeply loved & valued by the people around her but finds that difficult to see or understand. Which, fair, considering her dad left when she was little.

The relationship between Enid & her mum was both warm & fraught & so brilliantly done. And as always I enjoy a true crime takedown bc truly it is rotting brains! A scourge!

Loved it. For as long as Emily Austin is writing books I’m reading them.

"I've read that women are into [true crime] because it's like a dress rehearsal. They're more fearful of violent crime than us because they're victims more often. They're taught not to walk alone at night or trust strangers. They have a reason to pay attention to those stories."

We open the scene to just a normal story, Enid is going about her daily life, going to work, going home, going on some dates - but it’s an Emily Austin story so of course that trademark stomach-churning existential dread soon sets in and the average world around slowly morphs into something strange and unsettlingly beautiful.

Enid was remarkable - a strange narrator, with a slightly disjointed and jumpy storytelling style that might not be everyone’s cup of tea but to me was the perfect blend of chaos and charisma. She’s quirky, a little awkward in the way most of us really are deep down and painfully relatable in her dry humour and wit. Admittedly as a queer, spaced obsessed true crime fanatic with hearing loss in one ear and a bundle of anxiety and OCD this felt somewhat like a personal attack and I’m to check that Emily Austin isn’t outside my window with a notebook.

As she navigates through life, we see connections grow, form and break in different ways, we hear the way she sees the world and the many tangents her thoughts take her on. She navigates dark, difficult parts of life from her unique perspective and tries to make sense of a world where everyone is a little messed up but acting like they’re not and it’s all handled with such authenticity and grace to create a breathtakingly honest portrait of life after trauma. She also provided a lot of discourse on the true crime genre, asking why women in particular seem drawn to it - is it because we want to be aware of what could happen? And how do we respectfully consume content when there are real victims?

In true Emily Austin style, this book is so much more than it appears on the surface - it’s about life, connection, queerness, fear, trauma, family and all wrapped up in a peculiar little bow.

4.5 stars. Emily Austin is one of my favourite contemporary writers because she is just absolutely brilliant. I didn't think that she would be able to follow up her debut with something just as good but she really delivered. Enid is a lesbian who works administration at a space agency, and frequently calls or texts her Mom to give her interesting facts about space. Whilst she is dating various women, she meets Polly through a bit of an awkward encounter and becomes closer to her than she becomes comfortable with. Enid also tackles her irrational phobia of bald men and rewatches old videos of her teenage self on YouTube to help coast through her identity crisis and breakdown.

There were loads of hilarious moments in this book and a lot of the one-liners had a really Fleabag type humour to them which I thoroughly enjoyed. I don't usually laugh at books but the tone that Austin uses in her writing is executed with wit and timeliness. The comparisons to Fleabag are valid in how it also looks at female trauma and intense but unstable relationships. The family dynamics in the novel were really great as well.

I felt the book slightly waning at around 80% but then it massively picks itself back up again. I wasn't prepared for how emotional the ending was going to be and Austin tackles some really hard and deeply traumatic subjects in this book. It is less existential than her first book and more of an inward look into the disintegration of the self and how to piece oneself back together when everything seems to be going wrong in your life. I also found it kind of annoying how everyone just seemed to run into each other during the book, like every other scene would be Enid in a public place and then accidentally running into one of the other characters. But these were the only slight criticisms I had and they didn't really detract from my immense enjoyment of this book. If you were a fan of her first novel then you need to read this one as soon as it comes out because it's brilliant.

I loved Emily Austin's first book, Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, and was thrilled to get the chance to pick up her new book Interesting Facts About Space. Once again, Austin has created a character who is sweet, funny, anxious and desperately trying to find a way to connect with the people in her life. Enid works for the National Space Agency as a computer programmer, trying to find the glitches in the software to make the programmes work properly (a metaphor for her life, I think!). When she is feeling anxious, she calls her mother and tells her some interesting facts about space - and she calls her mother a lot.

This book is why I love reading - discovering someone's life experiences who is totally different from me but enjoying time in their company. There is so much going on for Enid: her absent father has died, she is building a relationship with her two half-sisters, her mother is depressed and she has to check whether it's a "lipstick day" or not, she has a phobia of bald men, she can't stop watching the videos she made when she was a child and that she posted on YouTube even though she is mortified by them, and someone is breaking into her apartment when she's not there. And yet Austin has pulled together a character that I couldn't wait to read more about and was rooting for the whole way through!