Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy satirizes the modern wellness trend of manifestation, portraying the characters’ quarterly Vision Board Brunch (VBB) as a ritual of toxic positivity. The novel situates manifestation within a broader constellation of 21st-century New Age practices like crystals, astrology apps, and curated meditation subscriptions, all of which function as a kind of pseudo religion for a secular Western culture. Where communal faith traditions once provided shared ritual, moral vocabulary, and mutual accountability, these practices privatize the sacred, recasting spiritual life as a matter of personal branding and self-optimization. The novel argues that this individualistic turn, far from being empowering, encourages hyper-individualistic solutions to complex problems and enforces a narrow, materialistic definition of a well-lived life. The characters’ attempts to manifest their desires, from corporate promotions to marriage proposals, reveal a desperate attempt to exert control in a world that feels alienating and arbitrary, even as the ritual itself deepens their isolation from any genuine communal bond. Ultimately, the vision boards function as a tool for social policing and a mask for deep-seated unhappiness, personal voids, and the avoidance of genuine self-reflection.

The VBB operates as a forum for enforcing social conformity. Participants are expected to present aesthetically pleasing and socially acceptable ambitions related to career, family, and personal fitness. Esme’s perfectly organized board, with its quadrants for high-intensity workouts, a promotion, pregnancy, and a meditation retreat, serves as the gold standard. This pressure to conform is so intense that Linda feels compelled to create a “fraudulent board.” Fearing judgment for her taboo desire to unite with a plane in death, she strategically populates her board with images of a handsome pilot, a stand-in that recasts her obsession as a conventional romantic aspiration. This act of concealment demonstrates how the culture of manifestation, with its emphasis on positive and relatable goals, can stifle authentic self-expression and force individuals to perform a more palatable version of themselves.

Furthermore, the novel reveals that the VBB is less a supportive gathering of friends and more a stage for passive aggression and social maneuvering. Karina admits she used a vision board to “nudge” her fiancé, Anthony, into proposing, and she later adds a photo of his female coworker with the eyes x-ed out, a move Esme criticizes as “voodoo.” The other women use the brunch to subtly critique one another’s life choices, questioning Anthony’s novelty T-shirt business and judging Karina for lacking career ambitions. The ritual becomes a means of wielding the universe’s supposed power to settle personal scores and reinforce the group’s social hierarchy, undermining any pretense of genuine spiritual practice.

Ultimately, the characters’ disillusionment with the vision boards signals a critique of the entire ethos of manifestation. After growing tired of her friends’ judgment, Karina creates a final board bearing a single word: “SURRENDER.” This act is a rejection of the goal-oriented, consumerist mindset of her friends and an embrace of life’s unpredictability. Similarly, Linda’s final, shocking board, which is filled with images of plane crashes, utterly shatters the VBB’s rule of “positive thinking.” By presenting her true, horrific desire, she exposes the superficiality of the ritual, which cannot accommodate a reality as complex and disturbing as her own, leading to her effective expulsion from the group.