Name: rhi's review of How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
Item: How to Make Friends with the Dark
Rating: 3.5
Author: rhi

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 that Karen M. McManus, the New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying, calls "rare and powerful." Here is what happens when your mother dies. It's the brightest day of summer and it's dark outside. It's dark in your house, dark in your room, and dark in your heart. You feel like the darkness is going to split you apart. That's how it feels for Tiger. It's always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger's mother dies. And now it's Tiger, alone. Here is how you learn to make friends with the dark. "Stunning and beautifully written."-HelloGiggles "A rare and powerful novel, How to Make Friends with the Dark dives deep into the heart of grief and healing with honesty, empathy, and grace." --Karen M. McManus, New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying and Two Can Keep a Secret "Breathtaking and heartbreaking, and I loved it with all my heart." --Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places and Holding Up the Universe Praise for Kathleen Glasgow's Girl in Pieces "Girl, Interrupted meets Speak." --Refinery29.com "One of the most affecting novels we have read." --Goop.com "A haunting, beautiful, and necessary book that will stay with you long after you've read the last page." --Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star

How to Make Friends with the Dark

How to Make Friends in the Dark

-Kathleen Glasgow. How grief affects everyone differently

Rose Donovan

“I can’t explain the Grand Canyon-sized hole inside me, so I wrote a book about it instead.”

Tiger, sixteen, has been pushing away from her overprotective mother, but when her mother dies suddenly Tiger must learn to live when it feels she is surrounded by darkness.

Violet Markey

Ich glaube, wenn ich jetzt etwas bei mir hätte, das mir den Weg zum S-Wort bahnen würde, dann würde ich es nehmen.

Ich setze mich auf den Wüstenboden, lege mein schmutziges Trauerkleid um mich und breche in Tränen aus. Ich überlege, wie ich mir etwas antun kann. Ich zerkratze mir die Arme mit scharfen Steinen. Ich schlage mir mit den Handballen gegen die Stirn. Mein Körper fühlt sich elektrisch an, vor Sehnsucht, Angst und Endgültigkeit. Anders kann ich es nicht ausdrücken.

Ich fühle mich innerlich dunkel, ich spüre, dass etwas an mir zieht, und ich habe keine Lust mehr, mich dagegen zu wehren.

Aus der Rumflasche zu trinken, ist einfacher, wenn du danach einen Schluck Cola trinkst. Die Süße lindert das Brennen. 

Ist das besser, als sich in den Schenkel zu kneifen, sich zu ritzen, Ellen Untermeyer zu schlagen, ist das besser ist das besser ist das besser ist das besser ist das besser ist das besser ist das besser.

Ich fange an zu lachen, weil das so schrecklich ist, so furchtbar, alle meine Knochen zerspringen in mir, und es fühlt sich an, als würde ich von innen heraus erstochen.

Ich bin ein gespaltenes Atom, ein menschlicher Riss, und alles Mögliche, wofür ich keine Namen habe, sickert aus mir heraus.

Ich habe keine Ahnung, wie ich mit diesem riesigen Klumpen Traurigkeit in meinem Körper leben soll, wie ich die Gewissheit ertragen soll, dass er nie kleiner wird.

taci

"He's going to stay for a little while." Ray grins. I stop breathing. My sister keeDs looking at the ground.

My voice trembles as I call out her name again, a little louder this time. No answer. I'm completely freaked out, and just as I'm turning to go, and planning to run down the dirt driveway and call Taran, or 911, the bedroom door swings open, and a gravelly voice says, "You must be the famous little sister. The one that up and lured my girlfriend away." My fingertips go cold. My whole body goes cold. Ray.

I will be in the dark forever, feeling around for a light switch and never finding it

Suze

It’s sort of like that poem: I thought I was done with death, at least a little bit, but death wasn’t done with me.

But there isn't a single word in the universe that you can think of that would describe the way you feel right now.

raia – inactive

There's so much I wish I didn't have to know about living.

"What would you say to your loved one, if you had just one more chance, just one?"

"Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you."

When I reach a trembling finger to touch my mother's face as she talks to me from the past, the screen kind of ripples, and she pauses, smiling in an amused way, and moves her head just so, right at the moment when my finger touches her cheek on the screen.

"Just love who you want, you know? Life is so much shit. We should just be able to love who we want."

Adults always say they want you to tell them how you feel, but when you do, they mostly tell you to try to feel another way, one that requires less work from them.

The last thing I said to my mom was "Why can't you ever just fucking leave me alone?"

And then it hits me, hard, that she's done precisely that, and forever, really really forever.

I want my mom to get up off that fucking table and hug me as hard as she can, even if it hurts me.

The story of an awful, universe-gone-mad-mistake, and one girl's emotional battle for clarity and forgiveness Tiger's mother has always been her whole world, but now she's sixteen her mother's control over everything in her life is suffocating. Just when Tiger feels she can no longer bear the way her life is managed, the unimaginable happens and her mother dies. As she slowly begins to make a way for herself, Tiger creates a new kind of family, some related and some not, who will love her and travel forward with her. This is how you make friends with the dark.

sharkie

Because what other choice is there, really?

Sometimes you're hungry, so thirsty for something to fill you up, you've craved it fir so long, but when you finally have it, it hurts going down. It's not a medicine for what ails you. It might just be the thing keeping you sick.

Mia 

The story of an awful, universe-gone-mad-mistake, and one girl's emotional battle for clarity and forgiveness from the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces I thought I was done with death, at least a little bit, but death wasn't done with me. It's always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger's mother dies. Now it's Tiger, alone. And she must learn to make friends with the dark. PRAISE 'Breathtaking and heartbreaking, and I loved it with all my heart.' - Jennifer Niven 'A rare and powerful novel...dives deep into the heart of grief and healing with honesty, empathy, and grace.' - Karen M. McManus 'Magnificent. A beautiful, heartbreaking alleluia to survival.' - Brendan Kiely

“you are carrying so many heavy feelings.

there just isn’t enough room for them all.”

this book broke my heart, i could never imagine losing my mum so young. 

the way kathleen wrote about tigers grief and the way she was dealing with it resonated with me so much. 

i’m so glad tiger found out she had a sister otherwise i fear how she would have ended up.

although some chapters were long and extremely repetitive, kathleen glasgows books ALWAYS tug at the heart strings. 

“you are carrying so many heavy feelings.

there just isn’t enough room for them all.”

~ ♡ 3.5/5

this book broke my heart, i could never imagine losing my mum so young. 

the way kathleen wrote about tigers grief and the way she was dealing with it resonated with me so much. 

i’m so glad tiger found out she had a sister otherwise i fear how she would have ended up.

although some chapters were long and extremely repetitive, kathleen glasgows books ALWAYS tug at the heart strings. 

The story of an awful, universe-gone-mad-mistake, and one girl’s emotional battle for clarity and forgiveness Tiger’s mother has always been her whole world, but now she’s sixteen her mother’s control over everything in her life is suffocating. Just when Tiger feels she can no longer bear the way her life is managed, the unimaginable happens and her mother dies. As she slowly begins to make a way for herself, Tiger creates a new kind of family, some related and some not, who will love her and travel forward with her. This is how you make friends with the dark.

'Breathtaking and heartbreaking, and I loved it with all my heart.' Jennifer Niven

Julie Rubens

Absolutely beautiful. 

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It was heartbreaking and heart shattering, but also wonderful and really well written. It’s a story about grief, but it’s about so much more than that. Furthermore, I really liked how the writing style changed whenever Tiger felt really disconnected from herself and the world. 

I read this book on my read but I’ll definitely be buying it in paper back now! Really recommend this book, I think it would be good for everyone to read it.

This all went way too close to my heart I needed to take a break while reading so many times cause it affected me so much. It’s such a good book but I’m so happy it’s over lol

Pia 

shru

"And i do find it comforting that maybe when you die, you get back all the things you've lost, like your legs, or your parents, or your daughters, or even your mom, and you get to eat all the ice cream you want, finally, and it doesn't hurt one bit."

Grief is scary yet inevitable, and I'm glad that a book like this exists.

Got this book from one of my friend freely when she was about to tidy her bookshelf up since I have read other of Glasgow's book, Girl in Piece. The other book hit me too close to home in any ways, therefore I had a quite high expectation with this book. First of furthermost, the characters' name in this book are ALL CUTE. Literally cute; Tiger, Cake, LaLa, Teddys, and the rest of them. It shows a contemporary dark story at the first glance.

While drowning into the story, I realized that this book isn't that triggering if I compared it to the other book. It probably is because the main character condition is quite different; Tiger with her own way to recover from her grief, meanwhile Charlotte already got her diagnose and have been in hospital ever since. The road-way was a bit fast, if I might say. This book guided us to feel the inner emotion that Tiger has while having this rush tension in early fourthy days. I didn't feel that trap and cage among her emotion, but it was whole release when she met the Grief Group, which I assumed that means I already enter her dark square one and try to figure out how to escape. To reach a pinch of hopeful light in the end of the dark road.

Glasgow make the main character's guilt and regret at the early pages. I was a bit almost pissed off with things and people in this book since some of them didn't be driven and sympathize enough about her condition. In the other side, I also was kinda turn off with Tiger behaviour in some occasions, but maybe.. that's thing we need to look for in people who dealt with loss and grief, therefore genuine love from the closest people are important in that term.

How To Make Friends With The Dark is a book about grief, the left handed, and those who broken and searching for the way back home. This book is about break, bend, and how to get up against all the odds, even when the universe was against us and how we make a peace with those all.

o livro é tristíssimo mas senti que estava um pouco estagnado (o que é ironico tendo em conta o tema)

Raven K

** spoiler alert **
           *♾️/5.

This was an excellent story. We follow Tiger who lost her mother, and now has to live without her mother. I genuinely appreciated this story. The author shows you how the foster care system really is, how life after losing someone could possibly be. I found myself having sympathy for Tiger. It was literally one thing after another for her. 

Another thing I loved about this story was how well-written all of the characters were. There wasn't one boring person in this book. They were all filled with personality. This made me feel more connected to not just the characters, but the book as a whole. 

I'm very appreciative of this book. This is because the author doesn't try to sugarcoat what really happens in the foster system, she doesn't sugarcoat how some parents treat their children. As painful as the above is, she was real about it, and that's something that needs to be talked about, painful or not. Because outside of this book it is also someone else's history.

Kathleen's books never fail to impress me. Her writing and characters are so real, genuine and flawed

This book taught me a lot about grief, foster homes and how to live with a hole in your heart

In some ways it reminded me of Charlie from "Girl in pieces", which is another book by Kathleen that I loved. 

What i love about her books is that even when the character is spiraling and things are going downhill, in the end they still end on a hopeful note ♡

Lulu Evensen

Kathleen's books never fail to impress me. Her writing and characters are so real, genuine and flawed

This book taught me a lot about grief, foster homes and how to live with a hole in your heart

In some ways it reminded me of Charlie from "Girl in pieces", which is another book by Kathleen that I loved. 

What i love about her books is that even when the character is spiraling and things are going downhill, in the end they still end on a hopeful note ♡



Breathtaking and heartbreaking. Kathleen describes tigers own horrible way of grief and the terrible aftermath in fostercare, family history and personal struggles. For everyone who enjoys emotional books from young adult, this book is perfect for you. TW: You're gonna cry. 

Sjoukje Posthumus 

I really really liked this book. It’s real and raw, and written in a way that captures the perspective of a 16 year old. I would have given it five stars, but the ending was anti climactic and not in that poetic realisation way. It kinda just ends. 

Kenzie Newberry

Krystyna 

This is an emotional, heartbreaking contemporary about a girl navigating grief and loss. It's raw and beautiful and couldn't have been told more perfectly. I really loved this one (it also hit kind of close to me for a few reasons). There were 2 parts that I wished had a little bit more detail, so that the reader was told what was said to a character and about a character on the page, but those are very minimal things that didn't take anything away from the story. It would have just been nice to have been added, in my opinion. This was such a heartfelt story. It would be perfect for fans of Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer. 

I love how this is not focused on romance or just "getting over it." I really appreciated how the author depicted grief and showed that it's not the same for everyone and doesn't take the same amount of time for everyone. I also really appreciated the depiction of foster care. It was just a really honest portrayal and such a touching story that really tugged at my heartstrings. I definitely recommend picking this one up.

This is out of my comfort zone, but I still liked it. There wasn’t much wrong with it other than the extreme feeling of helplessness it gives me every time I think about it. “How to Make Friends with the Dark” dives deep into the grief of loss and the things that come with it. It also touches on the corrupt in the foster system, along with learning the secrets that her mom never cared to share. You follow along while Tiger learns to cope and grow with the massive hole punched deep in her heart. This book is perfect for anyone who needs someone to relate to after the loss of a loved one.                       (Check warnings) 

Izzy 

Ariel

** spoiler alert **
           Tbh, I thought the story was not flushed out very well flushed out as the part where Grace's mom dies. There was not much feels when I read it and her um "boyfriend" Just disappears after like dropping her off at the hospital, which I thought was kinda rude and he's not that great of a side character as well.

Moving, heartbreaking but at the same time healing

Gwenifer

Alexa M

4.5!!
such a good YA book about grief and loss.

I just love all the books I've read by Kathleen Glasglow and this one did not disappoint, either.

It feels so pure and delicate to read the story of Tiger and I think her story of grief was portrayed very well.

I just love all the books I've read by Kathleen Glasglow and this one did not disappoint, either.

It feels so pure and delicate to read the story of Tiger and I think her story of grief was portrayed very well.

Caroll-Ann

** spoiler alert **
           I’d give this book a solid 4,5 stars. It was a good and important story but at the same time I kinda felt like something was missing, I couldn’t lose myself in the story.

It’s still such a good read though. I can sympathize with the character and what she’s going through mentally, not about the losing your mother but the way she feels while she grieves. 

A little trigger warning since the character talks about suicide and selfharming, as well as abuse.

Amy nicol 

One of the best books I’ve ever read, such a moving book about a girl trying too get her life back together after a loss.

'A BOOK AS FIERCE, TENDER, AND RARE AS ITS APTLY NAMED HEROINE, TIGER.' - Meg Leder, author of Letting Go of Gravity It's the brightest day of summer and it's dark outside. It's dark in your house, dark in your room, and dark in your heart. You feel like the darkness is going to split you apart. Here is what happens when your mother dies. That's how it feels for Tiger. It's always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger's mother dies. And now it's Tiger, alone. Here is how you learn to make friends with the dark. From the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Girl in Pieces comes a new heartbreaking story about love and loss and learning how to continue when it feels like you're surrounded by darkness. PRAISE FOR HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE DARK: 'A book as fierce, tender, and rare as its aptly named heroine, Tiger. How to Make Friends with the Dark is a gorgeously nuanced meditation on grief and family, and the incredible love that can pull you through the darkest of times.' - Meg Leder, author of Letting Go of Gravity 'Kathleen Glasgow is the rare type of skilled storyteller that knows you have to hurt your characters before putting them back together. I loved every word of this lyrical and devastating novel.' - Kara Thomas, author of The Cheerleaders 'In this raw, powerful, and heartbreaking meditation on loss and grief, Glasgow writes with unflinching beauty. We meet Tiger Tolliver at her most broken - at her darkest moment - and yet, somehow, How to Make Friends With the Dark teaches us how to let the light in.' - Julie Buxbaum, NYT bestselling author of Tell Me Three Things PRAISE FOR GIRL IN PIECES: 'Girl, Interrupted meets Speak.' - Refinery29.com 'A dark yet powerful read.' - PasteMagazine.com 'One of the most affecting novels we have read.' - Goop.com 'Breathtaking and beautifully written.' - Bustle 'A haunting, beautiful, and necessary book that will stay with you long after you've read the last page.' - Nicola Yoon, #1 NYT bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star

harper fitzpatrick

i cried. this was beautiful. one of the best books about grief i've ever read. highly recommend. tiger's relationship with thaddeus hurt my heart.

Jessica

- I think about what those two odd guys said.

You must go on.

I can’t go on.

You must go on.

Because what other choice is there really?

You have to make friends with the dark.-

This book had me in a chokehold

The character development omgggg

The different parts of grieve ?? Loved it  

When I was at 70% I was thinking of giving 3 or even 2 stars, I had trouble continuing reading and I felt like things were going on a slow pace. But after finishing the book and reading the author’s note, I truly realize that this book is about grief. And not just some teenage drama to entertain hopeless teenagers. And that this is just a really good Grief Book. About grief.

Welcome to the Big Suck now I guess

lalitha

the portrayal of grief and losing a parent in this book was fantastic i don’t think i’ll ever find something like this again. literal tears in my eyes as i’m typing this. 5 stars forever.

Lauren Tabor

This was one of the saddest books I’ve ever read, but it was beautiful at the same time. I cried through this whole book at what Tiger went through and what everyone in this book went through. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone so close to you and it was hard to read about. But I know so many people are grieving and I feel like this book gave me a new perspective on what those people are going through. 





Thank you to Netgalley and Delacorte Press for letting me read an advance e-arc of this book for my honest review.

Cynthi

3.5/5 stars

I've never had anyone close to me pass and ik everyone grieves differently but the way this depicts the heavy and sinking feeling.
When you just need to feel anything. something.
The pinching yourself so you don't cry. The silent crying every night.
The just not caring anymore. Sleeping all day. Not eating.
It really shows the signs.

That damn dress I wanted it gone.
In the before Tiger was a bitch. She was stuck-up. She made everything about her boobs.
I despised the first part I wanted to DNF 20 pages in.
I didn't care for Tiger's character in general cause even after the before section sometimes she was self-centered and immature.

I feel like all the characters were incomplete. Except for Tiger. I wanted more of everyone else.
Like I get that her warm milk experience sucked but why is she comparing it to other foster situations like umm girly you drank one glass of gross warm old milk you could've been abused or raped.

I liked the plot it wasn't like shocking or anything but ig it could bring awareness and stuff.

Mia &
How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow

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