It's very disappointing when a book I have been anticipating for months falls flat. After some flittering around online, I seem to be in the minority of people who disliked Sky Daddy by Kate Folk. While I try to decipher if the distaste was caused by the audiobook narrator, the prose, or a personal preference of mine not being met, let's talk about it. 

Some things to note!

• This is the first thing I read by Kate Folk, but I would read others because I love her writing. 

• I listened to the audiobook.

Below is the synopsis from Goodreads.

Let me start with the things I liked!

Kate Folk has a way with words. I would read her other book to dive headfirst into her prose. That's what kept me going through this book. It's also the reason I could have given it a higher rating if I had read it physically as opposed to an audiobook.

The end of this book is ambiguous and perfect. I enjoyed into the last few chapters because of the momentum, honesty, and connection between characters. I found myself rooting for Linda, finally, and it's so disappointing that it took so long into the novel to achieve that emotion.

As a writer, I think it's easier to write about people who aren't your protagonist because they become part of your world-building. Unfortunately, I didn't like any of the characters in Sky Daddy. 

Linda is our protagonist and for some reason I couldn't connect with the whimsy other readers boasted about. I've considered this being because of the audiobook narrator. She was very flat when she read it (think Tina from Bob's Burgers), but then I thought, no, that's exactly what Linda sounds like. I had a hard time picturing Linda and relating to her, even though we’re around the same age. The most difficult aspect of the novel for me is the tether from Linda to the heart of the novel: the desire to be accepted by others for who you truly are. Linda lives alone; she has one friend named Karina, two male interests to varying degrees, and a strained relationship with her family. While we explore each of these relationships, I had a difficult time accepting her obsession (I'm not sure this is the right word) with airplanes causing these discrepancies. It could be because she doesn't have a hobby outside of airplanes, at least nothing mentioned in the book. The sliver of this I did think was very real was Linda's internalizing anxiety around her secret. The anxiety that people aren't going to like her because she harbors a secret, as if they already know it.

Karina, potentially my favorite character in Sky Daddy, is Linda's best friend and co-worker. She tries to bring Linda into her friend group via a vision board group, which is one of my favorite nuggets from the book. Karina is getting married to Anthony and is Linda's tether to reality. Karina is also afraid of flying which is a larger plot point in act two. Linda puts Karina on a pedestal and takes great pride in being her friend which makes readers question why they are friends. Then, Karina drops some fucked up secret that cements their relationship by a thread. To me, their friendship seems to blossom out of proximity. They work together, they become work friends, then become outside-of-work friends. Karina is dating Anthony, who kind of sucks. All we get from him is there's potentially another girl he talks to and he sells tee shirts? He's very flat, as are the other men in the novel, and I'm not sure if this is to help sell the audience on the attraction to airplanes or, my better guess, this is the case with all the characters where they are elevated just enough to be in Linda's narrative, but not strong enough to stand on their own.

The other two main men in Sky Daddy are Simon and Dave. Simon meets Linda on a dating app masquerading as a pilot while he's actually 23 with not much going for him. Simon plays a small part, but the way they meet and their date is interesting enough that Simon could have been utilized more. The second man we meet is Dave, Linda's superlative at work. Linda puts him on her vision board, sees him drunk at the bar and convinces him to fly somewhere with her that night, fools around with him on the airplane, and stays in his orbit for some reason? Dave sucks. He doesn't want anything serious, but he almost wants to play the part in moments where he meets Linda's parents as her fake boyfriend and takes flights with her. He's also very flat. There is no compatibility with Linda, he's just there for her, which is a very real dynamic, but I don't like Dave enough to make that work. I think an unlikely friendship with Simon sans anything intimate would have been a stronger plot line. 

That's just me though, I didn't love any of the characters and I am a character reader. Which is why I didn't love this book as much as I thought I would. It didn't come together for me until the last two chapters when Karina, Linda, and even Simon peel back some layers. This is where Linda begins to feel valued by the people around her.

But, that's my biggest issue in Sky Daddy. Linda's anxiety around not being accepted is brought upon by herself in a way that comes off very self-victimizing, as though she's manifesting her circle not accepting her or thinking she's weird because she's so convinced they all think that already. This anxiety isn't developed enough for me as a reader to feel it alongside her or empathize with Linda. If I could feel what Linda was feeling, I would have enjoyed this a lot more.

The plot of Sky Daddy also fell very flat for me because it was repetitive maybe I don't care enough about airplanes to appreciate the jargon Linda speaks. But I wanted to. 

Linda goes on "dates" with airplanes, where she masturbates while she's on board. She dreams of "marrying" an airplane, where she'll die in a plane crash. She flies monthly and the first half of the novel is used to set the scene and show us how cherished these flights are. Predominantly because Linda is very isolated and life is tough for her. Things start to ease up on Linda in the second half, and we see her human relationships complicate more. For me, there was still too much plane and self-pleasure talk and I couldn't get over how bizarre, yet bland these monthly rituals were. You need to get over that to appreciate the weird that is Sky Daddy. 

Let's get to the meat of the book: we all want to be accepted for who we truly are. 

Linda longs for someone to accept her and her plane kink wholly. We gather that doesn't come from her parents, the family she rents from, co-workers, or potential suitors until the end of the novel when Karina shows up. This is my hot take: I think it's okay to have secrets, and I think your real friends are the people who accept you entirely. Linda has this desire to share her marriage plan with people by micro-dosing it via vision board and a dating profile on a website designed just for pilots. But, I think we can keep some things to ourselves. Do our friends, especially the ones afraid to fly, need to know how we plan to "marry" a plane? Do they need to know we touch ourselves on planes with a small piece of another plane? I don't think so, but I do think your real friends are the ones who can hear those tidbits of personality and think okay girl hell yeah!

I only started to appreciate it a smidge more when I read the comparison to Moby Dick, like the first three words are Call Me Linda. Maybe reading Moby Dick and revisiting this would help? I don't know y'all this is just not my branch of fiction.