I have descended from my ivory tower and read a fiction book that was written in the 2000s…and I had such a fun time doing it! Andy Weir weaves science into his stories so well, and I loved the relationship between Grace and Rocky. Finally, as far as tropes go, humans and aliens trying to teach each other their respective languages is one of my favorites.
I think for plot/writing reasons (similar to The Martian), Grace’s crew died. I wish there was a bigger deal made about the mysterious sleep deaths too, mostly because story-wise it’s a great character beat/world-building piece for Rocky as it’d be horrifying for him in context.
The explosion deaths are also pretty convenient to leave Grace on his own, show that stupid crazy terrible things happen as per the style of disaster stories, and more to show the contrast between actually very competent ideal candidates and Grace himself (again setting up his predicament).