How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow

After reading Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow I went back to the bookshop and bought the two other books by this author the bookshop had. How to Make Friends with the Dark was one of them and that afternoon I started to read it.

How to Make Friends with the Dark is a novel about grief. After a day at school, Tiger gets the call that her mom has died unexpectedly. For Tiger, her mom was everything as she was living without a dad or any siblings. After her mom’s death Tiger gets put into the system and Tiger gets lost in a very dark place. In a dark and uncertain world Tiger has to find out how to live without her mom.

“You are carrying so many heavy feelings. There just isn’t enough room for them all.”

Kathleen Glasgow, How to Make Friends with the Dark

I found this book a lot more hopeful than I would have thought. Tiger is struggling a lot but even in the darkest place some people want to help her and would do everything in their power to get her back to the right side of life. The book shows how difficult it can be to deal with loss and that it is normal to feel like the world is imploding on itself. It shows that even if everything seems hopeless there will be light at the end.

“I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside: splintered into a million bloody and sharp pieces.”

Kathleen Glasgow, How to Make Friends with the Dark

Kathleen Glasgow writes about topics that are too taboo to talk about even though it shouldn’t be this way. People in real life are going through dark periods in their lives. It can be comforting to read about a book character going through these same troubles and getting out on the other side.

I am certainly going to pick up the other books Kathleen has written and will write. This book will get 4 stars.