Description

‘A full-throttle thrill: strap in!
Daily Mail
A CLASSIC STORY OF GIRL MEETS PLANE.
A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN TIME, VOX, OPRAH DAILY, VULTURE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, ELECTRIC LIT, DEBUTIFUL, BOOK RIOT, PEN AMERICA, AND THE SKINNY

‘Batty and brilliant’
THE TIMES

‘Surprisingly tender. Deliciously weird’
RACHEL YODER, author of NIGHTBITCH

‘Wonderfully weird and worryingly convincing’
CHARLOTTE MENDELSON, author of THE EXHIBITIONIST

‘A little bit JG Ballard, a little bit Ottessa Moshfegh’
DAILY MAIL

Linda tries her best to lead a normal life. But once a month she escapes to the airport to secretly indulge in her true passion: Linda is sexually attracted to planes, and believes it is her destiny to someday marry one by dying in a fiery crash.

When the opportunity arises to hasten her romantic fate, Linda must choose between the trappings of an ordinary life and succumbing to her deepest desires.

‘A dog whistle for the true freaks – never have I felt so seen! I loved it’
RITA BULLWINKEL, author of the Booker Prize-longlisted HEADSHOT

Fasten your seatbelts, and get ready for this year’s wildest ride
‘I’ve never related more to a fictional character’
Amazon reviewer,

‘Best book I’ve read in a few years!’
Amazon reviewer,

‘I hate how much I love this book’
Amazon reviewer,

‘Weird and different and clever and beautiful and moving and funny and I honestly can’t recommend it enough’
Amazon reviewer,

‘It rearranged my brain a little bit’
Amazon reviewer,

‘The most surprising read of the year so far . . . embrace the weirdness’
Amazon reviewer,

‘Weird, but in amazing ways’
Amazon reviewer,

Publisher Review

Kate Folk has an idiosyncratic, spare style that is well suited to her truly odd, ridiculous, inexplicably poignant subject matters . . . buckle up, it’s one hell of a ride — Most anticipated books of 2025 * Literary Hub * Folk fuses Moby-Dick with J. G. Ballard’s Crash for a blistering debut novel about a woman’s sexual and mortal obsession with airplanes . . . The allure of an inanimate object has seldom been so touchingly rendered than in Folk’s wry, tender, and sweetly odd narrative. It’s an unforgettable ode to the pursuit of desire — Starred review * Publishers Weekly * Far and away one of the most audacious and surprisingly feel-good books that 2025 has to offer — Most exciting books for 2025 * Polygon * Folk – following up her memorably weird and innovative story collection, Out There (2022) – displays a masterful command over Linda’s mindset and thought processes in her first-person narration . . . An utterly confident and endearing portrait of a woman unlike anyone readers have met before — Starred review * Kirkus * A subversive and touching love story — 2025’s Must-Read Novels * Language Arts * Audaciously imagined. Slyly executed. Surprisingly tender. Deliciously weird — Rachel Yoder, author of NIGHTBITCH This is the craziest, funniest book I’ve read in a while. And I read a lot of crazy, funny books. Get your boarding pass out and get ready for some turbulence. Sky Daddy is insane — Gary Shteyngart, author of OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS This book is a dog whistle for the true freaks – never have I felt so seen! I loved it — Rita Bullwinkel, author of the Booker Prize-longlisted HEADSHOT Breathtakingly audacious, Sky Daddy lifts off and swiftly accelerates, breaking the barrier of your preconceptions and disbelief, taking you to utterly new places and insights. . . . A beauteous, drolly funny joy ride — Ling Ma, author of SEVERANCE Sky Daddy is an exhilarating, addictive and entirely convincing novel, not to mention strangely tender, deeply compassionate, and with pin sharp prose — Lara Williams, author of SUPPER CLUB Hilarious, refreshing, and perverse, Sky Daddy is a soaring portrait of modern obsession, of knowing exactly what you want and trying to wrestle it from the jaws of our ridiculous world. Kate Folk’s sharp sentences and sidesplitting characters sparkle with glorious cringe. Do not miss this flight — Henry Hoke, author of OPEN THROAT Delightfully weird and totally electric. As arresting as g-forces during takeoff, Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy is excellent, and protagonist Linda is one of the most memorable and engaging characters I’ve come across in a long time. A captivatingly original and uproarious love letter to the strange forces of desire and destiny that drive and connect all of us — Gina Chung, author of SEA CHANGE Get on board already, Sky Daddy is absurd and poignant, hilarious and gruesome, razor-sharp and tender-hearted. From here on out I’m reading anything and everything with Kate Folk’s name on it — Lily Brooks-Dalton, author of GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT Sky Daddy is the page-turning tale of a self-destructive love affair between a woman and her romantic obsession: a Boeing 737 named N92823. With this brilliant deep dive into the irrational abyss of obsession, Kate Folk proves herself to be a truly original new voice in fiction — Mat Johnson, author of DARK RAIN I started scribbling ‘LOL’ in the margins of Sky Daddy, but I stopped when I realized I would do so for nearly every line. By the end, I found myself breathless, shocked, and wonderstruck. On the surface, this is the tale of Linda, an eccentric woman romantically attracted to airplanes, but the novel’s emotional underpinnings are anything but absurd. After turning the final page, I could not shake this story of a woman grappling with grief and deep loneliness who bets on her own happiness and refuses to give up. Kate Folk is a singular talent, soaring in a brilliant universe all her own — Emily Habeck, author of SHARK HEART PRAISE FOR KATE FOLK’S OUT THERE

‘Wonderfully weird’
DAILY MAIL

‘Extraordinary . . . Folk is a dazzling talent’
KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

‘The literary love child of Kafka and Camus and Bradbury penning episodes of Black Mirror’
CHANG RAE-LEE, author of A Gesture Life