Holdout book summary

Holdout follows Walli Beckwith who just so happens to be a model astronaut. She works with two Russians and she’s the only American. They’re close, but they kind of have to be since they work in close proximity for months. Walli is great at what she does or else she wouldn’t be there in the first place. After there was an accident with the space station that forces the others to leave, Walli refuses to go. Staying on the space station is a last-minute decision to bargain with the government over some bad things that are happening on earth. Can Walli bargain with those stubborn politicians?

What I thought of Holdout

I want to thank Dutton and Jeffrey Kluger for the opportunity to read and review Holdout. I was pretty stoked to be contacted to read and review this story. Holdout is actually very well out of my comfort range because I don’t read many Sci-Fi books. With this one, I wanted to step out of that a little because the summary of the book seemed very thrillerish (is that even a word). I love thrillers so that’s why I quickly grabbed this up.

The Characters

As I stated earlier Holdout follows Walli Beckwith. She’s a very smart woman. Then again she kind of has to be if she’s up in space doing research. She loves her job. I just hat that she had to go to the extent that she went through to get the government to help out an area caught up in flames. Thinking of others in hard times should be a top priority and not a complete afterthought. Makes you realize how corrupt everyone is becoming to not even want to help. There are excuses after excuses when there’s a way to help out a lot of people. But a lot of people, including our government, priorities are in the wrong place. I just hate that Walli has to jeopardize her job in order to help others.

For that very reason, I like Walli a lot. Her co-workers are amazing too for not treating her badly like a lot of other people were.

The Plot

The plot of Holdout is where I think the story lost me. I kind of got the impression that this was going to be sort of a sci-fi/thriller. I get that the story has to be classified as something but the way the story is written it’s kind of hard to see it as sci-fi. Other than the fact that they are in space there really isn’t anything sci-fi about it. On top of that, this story is very political.

Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with politics or anything political related but that’s something readers who enjoy that kind of thing. For me, I avoid politics like the plague. There’s just too much headbutting and arguing over the littlest things and then you lose friendships because people can’t let things go anymore.

On top of that with the last several elections you just see so many hateful people. Then you have people who won’t talk to you anymore just because you vote for a certain party.

I know I know I got off topic. Just to clarify why I wasn’t the biggest fan of Holdout is because of the whole political aspect of the story. Granted there are a few things I did enjoy such as the writing style. The story is very well written and thought out.

If you enjoyed this review then make sure to check out my review for We Were Never Here.