Project Hail Mary

Same premise as the film¹ - an astronaut is sent to space to save the world.

Far more sciency and hard sci-fi than the film, but still keeps the reasonably chipper tone. It’s all in first person so you get to know what’s going through the protagonist’s mind a little better.

The appeal of nerdy mathsy sci-fi is that you don’t have to suspend your disbelief too much to get on board with the story. It mostly worked for me, but it does feel a little too much like Weir wants to show off the research he’s done.

Again much like the film I really liked it but didn’t completely love it. The ‘nerds rule the world’ vibe is fun and makes it a bit of a page turner, but also somehow dates it.