What a wild ride for me!

I started listening to this audiobook mid-March, basically because it felt like the universe kept pointing me towards it, through people telling me their love of audiobooks, then people on Reddit saying this is the best audiobook ever, then movies and people around me randomly saying "Hail Mary," and then of course all the promo of the movie and Ryan Gosling getting pushed to my face. I don't really know the purpose behind it, even now that I'm done, but as a big believer of the power of our subconscious mind, I decided to give it a go.

I immediately agreed with everybody saying how great of a book (AND and audiobook) Project Hail Mary is. It swallowed me whole for hours on end, and it was so easy to follow the science even though I am notoriously not a Physical Sciences person (I am literally so so bad), so this speaks volumes on both Andy Weir and Ray Porter.

And, talking about Ray Porter, he doesn't JUST read the book, but he becomes the characters. I loved every second of Grace's internal voice, memories collapsing, emotions succumbing, him becoming himself and finding a life worth fighting for. Rocky being the best companion a man on a suicidal mission could ask for.

Yes, it took me a bit over a month to finish it, but this book kept drawing me back to it; there's something about this story that makes you want to see it through, even when you're extra tired from work or distracted or a little heartbroken. And then, I think this was both the beginning of a chapter and the end of one in my life. Or, maybe more on the nose, a new book in my life. Let it be one in yours too!

I listened to the audiobook on this one, per Reddit's recommendation (duh). And I'm so glad I did. I can't say how the experience would have been absorbing every line through my eyes, but hearing Jennette narrate her own story is something else entirely. There's nothing I can say about the story itself that hasn't already been said, and nothing I can say about her experiences that isn't hers to own. But she is, at least for this memoir, an exceptional writer and narrator.

My favorite thing about listening was being able to experience every character the way she did: she voiced them comically at times, but always with a genuine quality. What struck me, and made me chuckle more than once, is how the other characters' voices often sounded slightly dramatized, their words a little pre-rehearsed and written on paper (which, of course, they are). But whenever she delivered her own lines of dialogue, it sounded as if she'd just thought of them in the moment. Which, I imagine, is exactly how it felt to live through it. Whether that was intentional in the writing, the narration, or both, I can't say, but it added a distinct flavor, and gave the whole story more dimension.

It's not my place to take a take (yep) on any of the real people in this book as it's not my trauma to judge nor I a licensed psychologist. But she wrote them well enough that I couldn't quite bring myself to fully hate them. Most of them, anyway. She lets you see them the way she saw them then, and the way she sees them now.