Review: Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie
Skye Falling follows 38-year-old Skye, the transient owner of a guided travel company, as she spends her off time between trips in her hometown of Philidelphia. While at her childhood friend's B&B, Skye is found by a 12-year-old who has recently discovered that Skye was her egg donor. As Skye gets to know Vicky, the child, she has to confront her own inability to form and maintain meaningful connections and how that connects to her past.
Vicky found out she was conceived using Skye's egg after her mom died; she is processing the grief and betrayal she feels from her mother's death and this secret that was kept from her. Skye is a queer woman who dates mostly women; over the course of getting to know Vicky, she developed feelings for Vicky's Aunt. As that complicated relationship is blooming, Skye is figuring out her own relationship with her mother and brother and the friends she left behind in Philidelphia.
If you love a character-focused book with a strong voice, I would absolutely recommend this book to you. This book explored the ideas of family and connection, community- specifically Black community, confronting past trauma, embracing anger, finding a sense of home, and processing grief.
This book has a really hopeful and satisfying emotional ending, but if you are the type of reader who wants all the plotlines completely tied up at the end, I am not sure if this would work for you. I did feel towards the end like so much was going on, so much that I wanted to spend more time following, only to realize there were nowhere near enough pages left to get all the conclusions I was interested in. Again, I don't think it was unsatisfying, just a heads up to prevent that from being a surprise.
As I read, I occasionally felt like Vicky didn't always read as a kid, sometimes falling into the sage child thing that is pretty popular in literature. There are plenty of moments where Vicky does seem like a child, though she has very understandable mood swings, she is actively shown to be testing out different likes and behaviors in a way that seemed very accurate for children of that age.
I am really glad this book was recommended to me, and I look forward to reading more of McKenzie's work in the future.
I gave this book three stars.
