How to Make Friends with the Dark

By Kathleen Glasgow

From the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces comes a novel about love and loss and learning how to continue when it feels like you're surrounded by darkness.

"A rare and powerful novel." --Karen M. McManus, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying and Two Can Keep a Secret

Tiger's life changed with a simple phone call. Her mother has died. That's when darkness descended on her otherwise average life.

Tiger's mother never talked about her father, and with no grandparents or aunts or uncles, her world is packed into a suitcase and moved to a foster home. And another. And another. Until hope surfaces in the shape of . . . a sister?

Sometimes family comes in forms you don't recognize. But can Tiger learn to make friends with the darkness before it swallows her whole?

"Stunning and beautifully written."-HelloGiggles

"Breathtaking and heartbreaking." --Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781101934760

Kathleen Glasgow

Kathleen Glasgow is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Girl in Pieces, as well as How to Make Friends with the Dark and You'd Be Home Now. She lives and writes in Tucson, Arizona. To learn more about Kathleen and her writing, visit her website, kathleenglasgowbooks.com, or follow @kathglasgow on Twitter and @misskathleenglasgow on Instagram.

Reviews for How to Make Friends with the Dark

[faith_murri · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received this eARC from Delacorte Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book in any way. All quotes are taken from the uncorrected proof and are subject to change.

You have always been lonely and you have never admitted it.
Obligatory Summary

Tiger Tolliver's mother just died and her whole life has been turned upside down. Traded from foster home to foster home, from strangers to family and back again, she mourns her mother. There is no guide on how to cope with this kind of loss, and she's sinking under the sadness.

My Thoughts

I am honestly so conflicted about this book. I wanted to like it, I really did, and sometimes I did actually like it, but the writing and execution for me were the biggest issues. It was funny sometimes, but also just so strange. I can't really say what I didn't like about it, I just didn't like it.

I had a very hard time connecting with Tiger, the main character. She was very abrasive and I felt strange because I had to remind myself that I should feel bad for her. I've never suffered this specific kind of loss, but I have overcome death-induced depression after the suicide of my friend in high school, so while I could connect with the sentiments on a base level, they didn't inspire any real emotion in me. I'm the kind of person who emotionally connects to literally everything in a book, especially of this genre, so that was a very strange thing for me.

I found many of the other characters felt unrealistic, especially in their dialogue. Sometimes things were said that didn't feel like something any living, breathing human being would say, instead of a book character. Thaddeus came out of nowhere and became her friend in a very short period of time, which felt rushed and unrealistic to me, though I appreciated that he didn't just become a love interest as these characters tend to. The introduction of Lupe Hidalgo was probably the first thing in this that I genuinely didn't like, because she felt extremely cliche and unrealistic, especially with the other high schooler's reaction to her. She felt too blatantly rude, like a Disney Channel mean girl, and not an actual school bully.

I liked Shayna but felt that some of her plot twists could have been done better. There was a lot of weird pacing in this, which I guess reflects real life, but it made for a whiplashy reading experience. There were several times when Tiger just didn't address certain things that seemed like pretty pressing issues, which honestly contributed to my general dislike of her.

The various odd nicknames were jarring, as I've literally never met a single person in my entire life who honestly went by Cake or Crash or something like that. Maybe I've just lived in too many normal places, but that sounds like a cartoon character to me, not a real person.

This could just be a problem with the ARC, but the technical things in the writing were really weird. Like, it felt like this wasn't edited at all. I had such a hard time figuring out who the speaker was sometimes, because dialogue would continue into the next paragraph, but the new speaker rule was followed, even though the speaker was often the same. Like, all the author had to do was remove that extra quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph. It's literally that simple.

Overall, I thought it was fine, even really good at times, but because of the writing, I just really couldn't get into it. You might love it, it might even be your favorite book, but it just wasn't for me.

"Sometimes you need to open yourself to the possibility of the miraculous, Tiger Tolliver. Sometimes you just do."

[oldandnewbooksmell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s always been Tiger and her Mom, until, one day, it’s only Tiger and she has no idea what to do. Since she doesn’t know anything about her birth father, Tiger begins the process of bouncing from home to home. So now, she not only has to process the grief of her mother’s death, but also the constant changes in her environment. This book is about love, loss, grief, and family.

I lost my dad when I was 12. He was hit by a car while finishing fixing a pot hole at work. It’s been 16 years and not a day goes by where I don’t think of him. This book made my heart twist so tight, it brought up a lot of memories of how I handled it. I had tears streaming down my cheeks by the end of it.

Kathleen Glasgow captured that raw, empty feeling I felt as a 12 year old kid once I found out what happened to my dad.

“You feel skinned. Like whatever held you together has been peeled away. You half expect to look down and see your heart hanging out, a slow-beating, nearly dead thing.”

I never really knew how to handle my dad’s death that young. I was one of those kids who had a lot of anger. Like Tiger, I tend to have a bit of PTSD if I can’t get a hold of a loved one quickly, or if I don’t know if my boyfriend made it work safely I immediately have high anxiety. Tiger and other kids talk a lot about what to do with her parents’ items, especially their clothing. My family went through boxes of Dad’s stuff for the first time just this past Christmas Eve, it was still so hard.

Grief is a process you constantly have to go through. Glasgow mentions it in so many different ways in this book and I nodded my head at each one, thinking of my own. Like smells... warm asphalt smells like my dad after work... and what to do with their clothes, how to handle no longer having them around.

This book is such a raw look into the grieving process that one especially goes through as a young person and what that can lead to. This book will most likely make you cry, sometimes it's what you need in a book, sometimes it's not. But I do highly suggest this book to anyone who's experienced a close death (especially the loss of a parent), and those who are/were younger when it happened. It lets you know you're not alone in your feelings.

[lulu0917-526025 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the very few books that had me crying the whole, frigging, time. I loved it!

[purple_pisces22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Damn I found this book “unputdownable”...and so scary and heartbreaking.

The story was just so sad but yet seemed so real… Like how quickly something could happen to any of us and what kind of situation will your children have to then face. Hopefully the majority of us are in a better situation to begin with overall but it really makes you stop and think. I found the majority of the characters likable, with the exception of a select few parents, and the behavior of the kids at school was pretty right on. Now the sister should’ve probably been a character that we didn’t care for but she was so cool that you can’t help but like her.

I’d like to think happy endings for all.