Excerpt from Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter 1

Call me Linda. My tale begins in January, when I was invited to a Vision Board Brunch hosted by my coworker Karina Carvalho. According to Karina, the vision boards, crafted from common drugstore materials, could be used to manifest anything a person wanted in life. I was receptive to the idea, as I'd always subscribed to the notion of an intelligent universe, a web of predestination in which we all were tangled. Only such a cosmic force could bring about my dream of marriage to a plane—what others vulgarly refer to as a "plane crash." I believed this was my destiny: for a plane to recognize me as his soulmate midflight and, overcome with passion, relinquish his grip on the sky, hurtling us to earth in a carnage that would meld our souls for eternity. I couldn't alter my fate, but perhaps, with the vision board's help, I could hasten its arrival.

Karina had told me about previous VBBs, which her friend group convened at the start of each quarter, but this was the first one she'd invited me to, and I took it as a sign she wanted to deepen our friendship. I was so excited to see the evite in my inbox, I RSVP'd "yes" before considering the risk of revealing my dream to a gathering of normal women. I suspected Karina's friends would balk at a vision board comprising only photos of planes, or worse, crashed planes strewn in postcoital debris. The imagery might offend Karina most of all, as she was fearful of flying and had vowed never to set foot on a plane again. It was this quality that first drew me to her when I came to Acuity, where we both worked as content moderators for a video-sharing platform. I'd found her trembling in the break room, and learned that she'd just witnessed gruesome footage of plane wreckage in her queue of flagged videos. I comforted her, resisting the urge to inquire about the specifics of the wreckage and whether it could be viewed elsewhere on the internet. I'd always considered aerophobes my spiritual comrades, their fear and my desire flip sides of the same coin, and from that day forward, I knew Karina and I shared a special bond. As the VBB approached, I'd reached an impasse. I couldn't truthfully present my vision, nor did it seem wise to craft a fraudulent board. I didn't want to give the universe the wrong idea, which might cause it to mix up my destiny with another person's, as when a traveler picks up the wrong suitcase at baggage claim. I began to think it was safer not to attend, though I knew Karina would be disappointed.

On Thursday, Karina and I went to our usual happy hour at the sushi place on the ground floor of our office building. The VBB cycled venues, with a different member hosting each quarter, and this Sunday, it was Karina's turn.

"I'm making three types of mimosa," she said, her brown eyes gleaming beneath fluffy mink lashes. "Celia will be at work, so we'll have the whole house to ourselves." Karina lived with her fiancé, Anthony, at his mom's house in Daly City. Like me, they lived in a room off the garage, though unlike mine, their room had a window. I'd never been, but I'd seen pictures of the space, and it looked cozy: tile floor, tulip wall sconces, Scarface poster, Anthony's immaculate sneaker collection lined against a wall.

"Will Anthony be there?" I asked.

"Probably, but he'll stay downstairs." Karina frowned, setting down her sake cup. "Don't you like Anthony?"

I recalled previous happy hours during which Karina had expressed dissatisfaction with Anthony, always for good reason. There were the flirtatious Instagram messages she'd discovered between Anthony and his coworker at the fastcasual pizza restaurant. There was his novelty T-shirt business, into which Karina had sunk large sums of her earnings, with little promise of her investment ever paying off. There was his habit of forgetting important dates, such as Karina's birthday and their anniversary. I'd learned to be cautious when speaking of Anthony, to discover exactly where Karina stood on the subject of the man on that day before voicing any sentiment.

Excerpted from Sky Daddy by Kate Folk. Copyright © 2025 by Kate Folk. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.