This was such a beautiful, raw depiction of grief. I really love Kathleen’s writing and how she delves into difficult topics with such care. I’ve got a few favorite lines in the story. It helped me cope with some of my own grief reading this book.

CW: death, suicide/suicidal thoughts, grief

When her only parent dies without warning, a teen finds herself at the mercy of the foster care system. She’ll have to learn how to navigate new relationships and come up with a new definition of normal. Author Kathleen Glasgow brings her own personal experiences to aching reality in the wrenching but somewhat incomplete novel How to Make Friends with the Dark.

Sixteen-year-old Grace “Tiger” Tolliver just wants to hang out with her friends and survive school. The school part’s easy: with her best friend Katerina, or Cake, Tiger has gotten through every single day of academic torture from the third grade to their current status as sophomores. Lately, too, she’s attracted the attention of her crush; Kai, her partner in science class, has just asked her to the upcoming dance.

The rest of life, though, is a problem. Tiger is an only child to single parent, June, and June keeps Tiger on a tight leash. Tiger loves her mother, but she wishes—often—that June would loosen up a little. It doesn’t help that Tiger has no idea who her father is and that June refuses to talk about him. If Tiger had a dad or siblings, she’d have someone to commiserate with or at least someone who could take June’s attention off her for just a minute. But, nope. It’s just Tiger and June.

Until it’s not. June dies from an unexpected medical incident, and Tiger finds herself spiraling through the various stages of grief. It only gets worse as she learns that because she’s a minor and has no known relatives, she automatically becomes a ward of the state. Despite the fact that Cake’s mother, Rhonda, volunteers to take Tiger in, the social worker holds hard to the line.

Within days of her mother’s death, Tiger moves from one foster home to the next. The children she meets introduce her to the darker sides of life. At least Tiger knew her mother loved her and would do everything to make her happy. She’s at a loss for words when she hears stories about parental abuse, drug abuse, and alcohol abuse; she had no idea there were so many ways to hurt one’s self and others.

Then she gets word of an older half-sister she’s never met. Tiger clings to idea of family, even as she discovers that her half-sister isn’t exactly the epitome of responsibility. Still, Tiger wants to go home, and she’ll do whatever it takes to get there. Going home doesn’t necessarily mean all the demons have left, however, and she discovers that grief is a beast that follows a person anywhere.

Author Kathleen Glasgow shares in her note at the end of the book how much of it was inspired by her personal experiences with grief, and she scores full marks in Tiger’s story for nailing the sound and look and emotion of loss. Tiger doesn’t mince words when it comes to sharing the depth of her broken heart. Readers will want to reach out to her and offer their heartfelt condolences, so real are her emotions.

Separated from the grief angle, however, the book doesn’t work quite as well. Cake is refreshing as Tiger’s best friend, putting her own wants and dreams on hold, yet she disappears two-thirds of the way through the story with a half-hearted narrative explanation and doesn’t reappear. The half-sister who becomes Tiger’s guardian spends a lot of time fretting over her own problems. At one point, Tiger joins a group at school for grieving teens, but that part of the story fizzles out as inconsequential as well.

Readers may wonder why these story elements were introduced if they weren’t going to contribute to the overall plot. Other pieces of the story come across as unrealistic too. Tiger shares early in the book how poor she and her mother are—she mentions with wryness the thrift store clothes she wears—yet early on she and June stay in touch with their cell phones. If they don’t have enough money for food, how are they paying that bill?

For readers wanting a story that shares the reality of grief in all its ugliness, this book fits the bill. Otherwise I recommend readers Borrow How to Make Friends with the Dark.

The Quick Cut: A 16 year old girl finds her life turned upside down when her mom dies - putting her into the foster care system.

A Real Review:
Thank you to Random House for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Losing loved ones can be one of the most difficult moments a person can experience. We can handle going through the pain ourselves, but when it is someone else or when that person disappears - it can leave a hole in their lives. In this story, Tiger experiences that loss when her mom suddenly dies.

Tiger Tolliver never lived the perfect life, but she was happy with it. Her mom constantly struggles to pay the bills, but she makes it work between selling jam they make and taking books to local homes for cash. However, Tiger is growing up and wants to go to the school dance (against her mom's wishes) when she gets a call that her mom has died. With no dad in the picture and no known next of kin, Tiger is thrown into the foster system. Will she survive or will the grief break her apart?

First and foremost: this book was very hard to read. The amount of pain Tiger experiences (and puts herself through if we're being honest) is so insurmountable that at points it was beyond uncomfortable to continue. You get the most grim, dark version of grief a teen could possibly go through and for that alone - this book is definitely a trigger alert.

Beyond that, the book gives a very close look at the foster care system and it's not a pretty picture. Tiger may not have had family, but there was friends dying to take her and due to the law - she was still a warden of the state. There are good homes, bad homes, and some unsung heroes who do their best to make it a better experience for the kids stuck in this broken system (even if for a short time). In most cases, its still an unhappy ending as too often the foster system doesnt provide the type of support needed or the parenting really required.

The medical mention in this book is what causes Tiger's mom to die: the brain aneurysm. The book isn't broken out by chapters; it's broken up by before, after, & now. In after, there are two mentions of the aneurysm and neither in great detail due to Tiger's shock. The first is at the hospital right after her death (page 36) and the second time is when she receives her mom's death certificate (page 179).

Based on the first conversation, it sounds like a brain aneurysm ruptured and caused a subdural hematoma. To put that in plain English: her mom had a blood vessel in her brain with weak walls, which caused a balloon to be created and fill with blood. When it broke, that bloom filled the space between the brain and the brain cover - causing pressure which would've killed her.

I liked this book and even for moments related to Tiger, but she is infuriating. She ends up down an extremely dark path that takes a toll on her body (and her soul) which if she was less lucky would have seen her dead or in a jail cell. Rather than listen to the adults or those trying to care for her, she continued to wallow and drown in her grief like an addict to drugs or alcohol.

I can only see someone torture themselves for so long before it becomes too much.

My rating: 4 out of 5

I loved the title of this book! I wish it had tied in more to the story line though. I think that there is some strong messages in this book but it isn’t a book that you would just pick up and read for fun. It’s a pretty heavy read and not exactly what you think it will be. Overall, I liked it but it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

Kathleen Glasgow knows how to create such layered, complex characters, especially those who are struggling with deep pain. I was drawn Tiger on the first page and so invested in her journey and how she was going to survive without her mother. I ordered a copy for myself and will be suggesting this title to my students, especially during the creative writing summer camp I'm teaching.

How to make friends with the dark is a book about grief. It's a book about what it means to be left alone. It's about a girl named Grace (although she prefers to be called Tiger) and a giant hole inside her. This book will tell you how she became a friend with the dark.
It's really hard to talk about this book. Not just because of spoilers, but because this book broke my heart. On multiple occasions I had to put this book down because it would make my cry, and I just couldn't go on. It's really hard to imagine what it feels like to be left alone in this world. That feeling, to be without a mother... That feeling creeped into me while I was reading this book. It's really important to have this kind of books. Books that deal with grief, books that shows young people that it's okay to feel sad and that they are not alone. This book made me cry, it made my heart ache and it left me heartbroken. But it also gave me hope, hope that sometimes, everything turns out how it's supposed to be. Sometimes, you learn to make friends with the dark.
If you love books that have strong friendship, sisters that care about each other and amazing parent figures, than this is the book for you. In this book you will find well developed characters, amazing writing style and one and unforgettable Tiger, how will get under your skin forever. This book will break you, it will make you cry, but at the end, your heart will be filled with the hope that maybe someday every Tiger on this world will find Shayna. That every Tiger in this world will be loved and cared for. That they will not have to make friends with the dark.

I knew this would be an emotional read because I have read the first title by this author, Girl in Pieces. Though it was tough topic to read about, I think it is an important book to have available to teens. It deals with many things our teens do on a daily basis: grief, death, foster care, depression, suicidal thoughts. I will be purchasing this book for my high school library and I will be recommending it to my teens; even if they aren't dealing with kind of issue, it is important to develop empathy and understand what others are going through. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is because I feel like it could have been shorter, which would be more appealing to more of my students.

From the very beginning of this book, tears streamed down my face, uncontrollably. No matter where I was; at my house, at work or our in the world, I couldn’t put this book down or stop crying. Kathleen Glasgow has brought to life the feeling of loss in such a gripping, realistic way that it only makes sense that she has felt this kind of loss in her own personal life.  This story starts with Before. Before Tiger loses her mother, June. You are there with her before, during and after this crushing loss. We then follow Tiger as she is moved between foster homes and we experience the good and bad characters that Tiger comes into contact with. Tiger may have just lost her mom, but through a very dark road, she finds new people to call family. This book really opened by eyes to foster care and adoption. I had no idea how it all worked and how sad it is. To lose your family and be thrust into this chaotic ecosystem where you have no freedom is absolutely shocking. If you are struggling with loss, mental health or anything else. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Although I cried a lot, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend everyone check it out. The cover is gorgeous, the story is addicting and you won’t be able to put it down. Thank you NetGalley for gifting me this book.

I received this e-arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I seriously just finished this book and I'm having a hard time to put all my thoughts into words. How to Make Friends with the Dark is a book about deep, deep grief that needs to be read. I knew going into this book that it was going to be sad and I would most likely cry, but what I didn't know, was how it was going to leave such an impression on my heart.

We follow Grace "Tiger" Tolliver, a 16-year-old girl who only has her mother and a handful of friends. She lives a somewhat normal teenage life. She deals with crap at school with bullies but has the coolest best friend. All she wants to do is kiss the boy she likes and who she thinks likes her back. She has a super overprotective mother who hardly lets her do anything, but her mother is all she has, so she is fine with it. She doesn't have a lot of food, and gets all of her clothes from thrift stores, but is okay with that, because she has her mom. But what happens when her fun-loving mom is taken away from her by death? Unspeakable grief.

We now follow Tiger through her grief. Having to figure out who she is going to live with. Staying with complete strangers. And trying to figure out who the heck she is without her mom. It was a hard book to get through at times. In the head of someone who has so much grief, it is overwhelming her. But I really loved Tiger. She is a super strong character, even throughout all that has happened.

I felt like this book was so eye-opening to a world I don 't know personally. Kathleen Glasglow definitely has a with words. She makes you fall in love with all these amazing characters and feel exactly how they feel.

I will say that although this book had a lot of sad parts, there are hopeful parts as well. I recommend this book to everyone, especially those who are dealing with grief. Also, I recommend you read the Author Notes, they are super good.

Thank you, Kathleen, for writing this amazing, heart-wrenching, story for us!

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.

I am absolutely mind blown at how amazing this novel was. From the very first sentence I was ready to not stop and to see where kathleen was going to take us on this journey. I will say, if you need a trigger warning please be warned about sexual abuse and suicide. Those topics were discussed but, it wasn’t as overpowering as I was expecting it to be due to me getting out of a domestic violence situation recently. The storyline was very captivating and I felt apart of the book the entire way through. It was very well written and I will continue to read anything she writes.

This book was absolutely beautifully written, but also heart wrenching to read. Glasgow did an amazing job about writing on a subject that is one of the harder things to endure, losing a parent, and she did so in a way that raw emotion flooded through me. I will be recommending to anyone that loved the ya genre on topics that are not all sunshine and rays.
Will be using in a challenge and letting the members of Chapter Chatter Pub know about how beautiful and heartbreaking of a read it is.

Right after having her first kiss Grace “Tiger” Tolliver learns that her mother has died from a brain hemorrhage. Now an orphan, Tiger is now a “ward of the state” and is now in foster care. Tiger must now grapple with her grief and the realization that things would never be okay again. This is one sad book. After her mother dies Tiger is immediately put into the foster care system where she sees how bad things could get for foster kids. While Grace is there because her only known parent has died, some foster kids she meets have living parents who are unable to care for them. While there are a few light moments, things do get gloomy. Readers get to feel Tiger's grief which hits her very hard. Glasgow has Tiger pass through different foster homes of varying quality filled with kids who are there under different circumstances. She doesn't flinch away from some of the failures of the system. While the book ends on an optimistic note I would not recommend this book for readers who are looking for a light read.

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this one, but I found Tiger's story so, so heavy-handed. Ms. Glasgow has proven she can write about extremely difficult emotional issues and relationships, but How to Make Friends with the Dark is so obvious in its You. Will. Feel!ness that I felt like I was being told what to feel instead of being allowed to actually feel it. And that's a problem when writing a book that's as intense as this wants to be--in order to be an intense and compelling read, it actually has to be one. Trying to corral a reader into feeling something is clumsy and ends up with the predominant feeling being annoyance (at least for this reader).

The cover is, hands down, one of the best ya covers of 2019 (heck, of all 2019 covers--it's that good!) and I think that some teens will enjoy this. But for me, the real sadness of How to Make Friends with the Dark is that it spends so much time trying to hit emotional beats that it forgets to fully deliver on real emotion.

This book is absolutely beautiful! I loved it! It was heartwarming and heartbreaking both at the same time. This is one of those reads that will stay with me forever. I would highly recommend this!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

Many thanks to the publisher and EdelweissPlus for providing me with an eARC of this title for review. All opinions are my own.

When I was describing this book to a friend who also reads a bunch, I said it was so good, but also soul-numblingly sad. I loved it, but it was HARD to read. Tiger's mom dies, which would be sad enough on its own, but Tiger has to deal with her last words to her mother (why don't you just leave me alone?) foster care (she has a non-existent and out of the picture dad), an unknown half-sister (what 20 year old can care for a 16 year old?) in the midst of a grief so large Tiger can't imagine ever finding her way out of it.

This was an amazing book. Fans of Glasgow's earlier work <i>Girl in Pieces </i> won't be disappointed, and to be honest, I enjoyed this one even more than that one. This one had a reality to it that felt almost raw. It was a situation that seems like it could be a moment or a chance away from all of us, which is scary and haunting.

Recommended for readers grades 8 and up due to some language and the maturity of the feelings portrayed, along with foster care realities. First purchase for libraries where realistic fiction is in demand.

Title: How to Make Friends with the Dark
Author: Kathleen Glasgow
Genre: YA Contemporary Fiction
Publication Date: April 9th, 2019
Rating: 3.5 stars
Contains (Warning): Suicide, Domestic Abuse, Parental Death, Language

eARC provided by publisher (Delacorte Press) through NetGalley

->Click for Synopsis<-

Tiger Tolliver is like any other teen. She is worrying about boys and dances but when she gets a phone call about her mother, everything changes. She must now learn how to live without her mother and figure out how to deal with the darkness that is creeping in.

I wasn't sure what to expect when diving into this book. I was drawn in by the cover and the synopsis made it sound quite intriguing. In some ways this book lived up to my expectations and in other ways it lacked a bit for me.

Tiger Tolliver is a typical teen until the death of her mother starts a domino effect of events. She doesn't know how to even begin to cope with her mother's death and having to deal with arranging the funeral, foster homes, and living relatives brings more stress and adds to the blackhole of emotions she already has.

This book is filled with tough subjects like the ones mentioned above and I am not sure how anyone manages to pull themself out of those circumstances. Tiger brings new light to issues that some children and teens face. It is quite heartbreaking.

The writing style was hard to get into and some of the little extra things, like the hashtags, just didn't seem necessary to me. There was some language which also is a turn off for me but I can understand why it was used since the book is about a teen.

The plot was filled with many dramatic details and at times it felt overwhelming. Some of the minor characters were present and then gone. I was hoping Thaddeus would be mentioned in the epilogue part but sadly he wasn't. I did like how they added an epilogue but it just wasn't as conclusive as I wanted it to be.

Overall, it was still a read that I will remember even if I may have not been a fan of everything. Tiger is a heartbreaking character and sheds light on many hard topics that other teens may face in their life.

I’m going to be the black sheep of this book I guess, but it was NOT for me. The storyline was insanely slow, I had zero connection with it, and it really just felt like nothing happened.

I normally like books that have a deep, emotional storyline; but this one didn’t hit the mark for me. I couldn’t FEEL the emotion at all. With what this book is based on I honestly expected to be a mess while reading it, and I just wasn’t. I was overall very disconnected and disappointed.

I can’t stop thinking about this book. It is stunning, exquisite and so very beautiful. I laughed and cried and sometimes got very angry. Grace, who prefers to be known as Tiger, has lost her mother and she is only sixteen. Her mother dies suddenly from a brain aneurysm. As far as she knows, Tiger has no other family. So of course she ends up in a foster home. This is a book about grief, loss and coping. It is also very realistic about the foster care system.I loved Tiger. It truly is a book about how to make friends with the dark. It is also about ways to begin to let the light back in. A truly beautiful book. This book has been added to my list of ‘best ever books’.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was heart-wrenching to read. Tiger has to endure so much and deals with many things that young children shouldn't have to deal with. The reader is given a bird's-eye view into the harsh reality of Tiger's world. It was powerful, expressive, and a reminder of how one lives in the dark, and how they need to come out into the light.