How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow [book review]

How to Make Friends with the Dark book summary

How to Make Friends with the Dark follows Tiger. It has always been her and her mother. She never knew her father and her mother never offered anything up about him. On a normal day, Tiger’s mother dies. Now she’s alone and trying to figure out how to navigate her life.

What I thought about How to Make Friends with the Dark

How to Make Friends with the Dark is the first book I have read by Kathleen and it’s another book I have found through the local library. Not many books make me sad anymore. I don’t know if I’m just not reading the right book or the books I do read just aren’t done very well but this story made me sad. Even though it did make me sad I’m still glad I picked it up. Sometimes we really need a good sad book to read every so ofter. I feel like it’s good for us to read those types of books!

The Character(s)

I’m so glad we got to read through Tiger’s perspective. Stories like this make you realize that everyone grieves differently. There is no wrong way to grieve and no one should tell you how to grieve. On top of that, no one should tell you how long you should or shouldn’t grieve. I’m just glad that Tiger has a best friend that is able to help her through the situation and talk to her and basically slap her in the face when she’s thinking about doing something she shouldn’t.

There are two things that irk me with this story. Tiger has her first kiss with someone she has had a crush on for a very long time so when he does her wrong I just want to slap him in the face. I get that not everyone is going to act the way you want them even after going through a hard but JESUS. There’s no reason to be an ass, especially after the girl just lost her mother.

The other thing is Tiger’s sister. I have a love-hate relationship with her. She’s smart and defends her sister through some pretty rough patches but the fact that she does some stupid things makes me want to slap her across the head as well.

The Plot

I do think this story could have been shorter. There are a few slow parts scattered around the story and some things could have been cut. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying the story even though that’s part of the reason why it’s not a five-star read for me. A good one hundred pages probably could have been cut out of the story.

Even though it has some slow parts you should still read the story! It’ll make you realize how bad our system is and how things are handled when children have nowhere else to go.

How do you guys feel about sad books?

If you enjoyed this review then you might also like The Half Orphan’s Handbook.