Holding Up the SkyReview posted August 19, 2025.
Southscript Press, 2022. 334 pages.
Review written March 14, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
Holding Up the Sky is a coming-out story, and one that is tough. We’re following Carter, who's got so many burdens in his life as a senior in high school, it feels like he’s holding up the sky.
He used to have a big brother looking out for him, but his brother and his father were killed in an accident that happened the afternoon of his brother’s graduation dinner. Since then, Carter knows he’s a disappointment to his mother. She has to work long hours so they can stay in their home. And Carter works to keep his grades up so he can be a doctor one day and make his mother proud of him.
And then one day, as Carter is trying to hold things together, a new boy comes to school who is flamboyantly and proudly gay. Carter doesn’t dare admit how much he’s attracted to him. Because if his mother finds out, she’ll be horrified.
We get a warning at the very front of the book that Carter’s going to end up turning to suicide to find freedom. All the plot points from there on out are predictable – but they still had my heart aching along with Carter.
I don’t usually cry over young adult novels any more, unlike when I was a teen myself. But this one had me in tears. I figured out what was coming, but it still seemed all too much. Why couldn’t this kid see how precious he was? How dare a parent treat him like that? Yet I read this book after having just learned about the suicide of a young transgender woman after her parents forced her to detransition. It was all too easy to believe this story.
I will say this: The story does end both hopefully and realistically. In many ways, it’s a message book (with a good message), but it also had me absorbed and invested in the story.