Sky Court

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Pub Date 01 Nov 2022 | Archive Date 14 Feb 2023

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Description

Casey Black—a seventeen-year-old butch lesbian—lives a quiet life with her grandfather in a small, central-Illinois town. When not at school or working at the Wise Owl Café, she spends most of her time at home in her grandfather's subsidized apartment complex, Sky Court. But when young Patricia Dale goes missing, Casey joins the search for the girl, despite the objections of her grandfather and her laid-back boss.

Fellow Sky Court residents and local high school basketball stars Steve Jones and Trevor Morrison rarely interact with Casey beyond the occasional silent wave of acknowledgment. But Steve and Trevor are hiding a secret that could very well unravel their local superstar status and possibly even endanger their prospects for college scholarships. Amid washing dishes and helping search for the missing child, Casey falls for another Sky Court occupant, Rowena Miller, who has recently returned from a semester abroad in France. Soon, the lives of Casey, Rowena, Steve, and Trevor intertwine in ways Casey never expected.

In Sky Court, a multi-layered mystery and coming-of-age story, Casey must face life and death head-on, while also contemplating the complexities of love, loneliness, and growing up.


Casey Black—a seventeen-year-old butch lesbian—lives a quiet life with her grandfather in a small, central-Illinois town. When not at school or working at the Wise Owl Café, she spends most of her...


A Note From the Publisher

Author Bio:
Faith Mosley has been telling stories since her childhood, when she and her brother would type up their tales on their beloved orange Olivetti typewriter and then carefully bind them together into books. Over the years, she has worked as a dishwasher, a shipping clerk, an AmeriCorps recruiter, a teacher, a financial aid officer, a claims assistant for the VA, a career development specialist, and a GED intake specialist. She earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Iowa and a bachelor’s in liberal arts from Western Illinois University. Her work was included in the short story anthology Lez Talk: A Collection of Black Lesbian Short Fiction (BLF Press, 2016). She now lives in Central New Mexico, where she has spent the past couple of years converting a small school bus into a tiny house on wheels. Sky Court is her first book.

Author Bio:
Faith Mosley has been telling stories since her childhood, when she and her brother would type up their tales on their beloved orange Olivetti typewriter and then carefully bind them...


Advance Praise

"In Sky Court, Faith Mosley weaves a powerful and haunting narrative. High school is a hard journey, especially when one is navigating the rocky terrain of sexuality and bigotry, but the characters in Sky Court must also contend with plenty of small-town drama and a disturbing kidnapping of a young girl. Mosley creates a rich cast of flawed characters that are believable and relatable, with a protagonist Casey Black that you’ll be rooting for the whole way. This impressive debut novel is propelled by intertwined stories of these characters stumbling and persevering, with plot twists aplenty."

- Kevin Dunn, author of Vicious Is My Middle Name


"In Sky Court, Faith Mosley weaves a powerful and haunting narrative. High school is a hard journey, especially when one is navigating the rocky terrain of sexuality and bigotry, but the characters...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781953639141
PRICE $13.95 (USD)

Available on NetGalley

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Average rating from 11 members


Featured Reviews

This drove me nuts actually. i genuinely was so confused the whole time because? WHAT WAS HAPPENING?
casey and rowena (my girls, owned the book, they deserve the moon and its stars<3)
casey is braver than i am, because honestly i steer away from drama, i never actually try to veer into it and holyshit she got into some messy shit.
But her and her granpa? that was the softest (sometimes) , reminded me of my grandpa, i miss him dearly<3
Trev and Steven, i genuinely don't know, that was so so messy i cannot comment.
Trevor's daddy issues tho? Fun stuff, same babe!
DON'T LET ME GET STARTED ABOUT the why patricia got kidnapped? THAT IS INSANE
and in the words of my best friend "men would rather kidnap their ex's kids than go to therapy" Insane. This book was so well written though. 4 stars. Thank you netgalley for the arc.

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READ THROUGH NETGALLERY shelf


As I heard Sky court is Faith mosley's debut novel i was actually interested to read it, because most of my favorite novels are debut works.
While Sky cout is an amalgamation of mystery thriller and teenage life, it's kind of a new wave of telling mystery thrillers. When a crime takes place in a small town it linearly effects most part of the town, which gets the writer to use their liberty in entering most of the lives of people as much as they can, its more than just about a mystery crime story now.
Casey being the lead character only because her role deals with most of the main investigation situations, otherwise we equally enter most of the lives involved primarily or secondarily.
Apart from this structure, the writing gets pretty rushed up for a novel, now I don't know if there was a certain limit the writer had to keep the draft in, but there could've been beautifully explained scenarios which undergo lack of it, that lets the impact very low. At the very start of the story, casey tells us how much she is a real watcher on people, but that lacks through the story mostly.
But the story had a lot of charms, the characters go on very interesting arcs, the main character casey gets a lot of going on which can surely connect effectively, for the most part the story tries to be relavent to present scenarios, and the story stays to its mark there, but the rush up gets to us everytime, for an excited fast reader, this is a nice reading, but once we pas through chapters and chapters of reading it loses impact.
Overall its kind of a fun read.

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This was a cute easy fast read. I did enjoy the book and how it wrapped up. However, it felt like I was reading three different stories.
I understand how Casey ties in with some of the characters, but I felt like Steve and Trevor's story was just super unnecessary. Maybe it was used as a filler but I don't understand why they were placed in there, besides from the beginning.
I would love to read the edited final version to compare it to the ARC. But overall, cute book!

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While the topics covered in this book are important, the plot can be difficult to follow at times, mixing Casey's struggles with the mysterious kidnapping of a young girl. These various strands come together at the end of the novel, but the journey along the way isn't particularly compelling.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

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Thoughtful, quiet, intelligent, and gently thrilling. I was hooked from the start and felt so deeply connected to each of the characters. Mosley's writing does away with the unnecessary flowery language and overwrought melodrama and instead cuts directly to the heart of who these people are.

Just a really wonderfully crafted little book.

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mosley has clearly promise and at first i was quite taken by the direct and simple narration (it brought to mind shirley jackson's we have always lived in the castle). but then the pov switches and the style remains the same and that really threw me off. i thought that the prose was conveying the narrator's naive worldview, but the same tone/vocab/style is used in chapters that employ a 3rd pov...it just didn't convince me,,,

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This was a cute easy fast read. I did enjoy the book and how it wrapped up. However, it felt like I was reading three different stories.

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Sky Court was hard to read because, throughout the entire book, I wanted to reach through the pages and hug Casey. She was more assertive, responsible, and resilient than most adults. She lived a life that no teenager should have, yet she did so with grace and a good head on her shoulders. Trusting her gut and not being afraid to speak up, she was able to save a life potentially. Casey did not hesitate to be anything other than who and what she was, and she was lucky enough to be loved by a grandparent who felt the same. I absolutely loved the relationship between Casey and her grandfather, and I felt invested in their relationship. My heart broke for her in the end.

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I kind of wondered if this book was originally a short story collection. I felt like I was reading three different connected stories. That said, I enjoyed it but I still some don't know why Steve and Trevor had such role? Casey tied in with everyone but their parts seemed out of place.

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sky court was an easy YA read for me
the best developed relationship by far was between Casey and her grandfather, <spoiler>i was devasted after his death and her reactions were genuine and relatable </spoiler>.
when it comes to the plot, there were two main points : the coming-of-age story and the disappearance of the girl. unfortunately, i feel like the mystery element was lacking since most of the progress was at the end and mostly rushed through.
that being said, i still enjoyed my time with these characters and woud recommend this book to younger teens that on their journey of self-discovery
thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with this ARC

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