How to Make Friends with the Dark

Easy read. Kept my attention and wanting to read more! I chose this book as the author is based in Tucson,AZ. Home state! The book is based on a topic that I deal with daily at work. Enjoyed the book. I believe it states that it’s geared towards a young adult ish audience, but it was a heavy topic. I enjoyed the read and am reading another book by the same author.

This year, I embarked on a literary journey by delving into the works of Kathleen Glasgow, a renowned author whose ability to convey grief, heartache, and pain is unparalleled. Her writing possesses a profound truthfulness, even when it evokes discomfort and emotional heaviness. Subconsciously, I may have chosen this particular story as a means of experiencing a profound emotional response. Tomorrow marks the anniversary of my deceased mother’s birthday, and less than a month later, I will confront the date of her passing. Perhaps I sought solace in the characters of this book, as my own reality resonates with multiple characters within its narrative. These characters are not merely fictional; they possess a tangible existence. While not every character in this book experiences a happy ending, the truths they embody resonate deeply with many readers. I find myself aching, grieving, and mourning alongside them, their innocence, vulnerability, and abandonment. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the stories that have been silenced yet continue to resonate with our emotions. I wholeheartedly recommend Kathleen Glasgow’s works to anyone seeking solace and understanding in the face of loss.

Tiger Tolliver is a fairly typical, sixteen year old girl, trying to find her way in the world. She's looking forward to her first school dance, enjoying her first kiss with her first crush, and wishing her mother would finally give her some autonomy. And it's those wishes that drive Tiger to attack her mother when she finds out she's purchased her a matronly dress for the dress. It's those wishes that motivate Tiger to tell her mom to 'just leave her alone!' And it's those wishes, that make that the last encounter Tiger will ever have with her mother. When June Tolliver dies unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm, no one is more shocked or devastated than her only daughter. Tiger has no one else in the world. She has no idea who her father is and her mother was an only child whose parents died when she was a young woman. Alone and sixteen, Tiger thrown into the foster system where she learns that not many people care about her woes and many of whom have even worse troubles of their own. As Tiger tries to navigate her new life without her mother, she faces more and more unexpected challenges that will test her sense of self, make her question who her mother really was, and will upend any semblance of a life she had. This was an extremely emotional read. Tiger's grief is palpable and the heartbreak leaps off the pages. Just when the sadness felt overwhelming, levity and hope were injected into the story, adding twists I didn't expect. Though it is a young adult novel, the content and heaviness made it a slower read for me. All in all, I found this to be a truly beautiful story about family, love, loss, grief, and coping with the devastation of losing your mother.

I lost my mom unexpectedly 4 years ago. Every unspoken thought, every emotion I couldn’t name or couldn’t face, every fear and anxiety unvoiced all came floating to the surface for me in this book. I can’t remember a time when I’ve highlighted or annotated so much. In fact, I’ve never annotated any book I’ve ever read outside of for a class. It was for these very reasons I found myself unable to turn the page yet I couldn’t stop myself from reading on. Kathleen Glasgow reached into my heart, took all my grief and allowed it to manifest in this story. Oddly enough, and without planning it, I read this just around the time of the anniversary of losing my mother. A few highlights resonated with me: “I don’t understand how things keep going when she has just stopped.” The weirdest thing in the world to me was driving home from the hospital and not really understanding how no one else was affected by this but my family. For everyone else, it was just a regular, every day Friday and they were doing what they’d always done. For me, however, my whole world just shut down. “I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside…” I remember going to Kohl’s to buy a blouse for Mom to wear to her funeral. The lovely cashier told me to have a wonderful day. I remember fighting the urge to punch her in the face. My mother just died. And she wasn’t supposed to so I wasn’t sure how I was going to have a good day, good week, good month, good year, good life. Of course, I gave a weak smile, took my bag and left. “I need my mother to come get me, to save me from the fast that my mother is dead.” This is one of those gold nuggets I knew I felt in the earliest stages of grief but didn’t have words until I read this book. I prayed for this many times. It’s the only prayer that was never answered. And then there’s “I miss my mother so much right now it’s loud inside me, like the worst thunder, the kind the shakes the windows, shoves the side of your house, makes you feel unsafe.” It took two solid years and moving closer to family before I finally felt safe again. It’s a new experience for me. Only when I felt safe was I able to begin to heal. I almost feel like this should be required reading for anyone who has lost something, especially unexpectedly. Grief is long and terrible and deep and painful and has its own timeline. You cannot rush it, push it, skip over it or wish it away. It is inevitable. It will let you know when it’s done with you. And those who’ve never lost someone cannot and will not ever understand this. This book is deep and so very personal. And I’m so thankful to Ms. Glasgow for sharing it with the world and with me.

This by far is one of my favorite books. I love this author and how she can write in such a real and truthful way. It allows you to be put into these characters shoes and feel what they feel. This book goes through all the emotions, it’s heartbreaking, it’s painful, it’s hopeful, it’s courageous and it’s real. Wish I could read it for the first time all over again.

Good for teenager

absolutely love this book it came super-fast and I'm already halfway through it :)

I was interested in seeing what this book was like because I loved “Girl In Pieces.” However, I didn’t love this book in the same way. I felt that Tiger was a character I wasn’t able to connect with and frustrated me at times. I knew that she was dealing with a loss that was so tremendous that I would never understand, but I felt that the aftermath of that felt completely off-book. I get that’s kind of the point, but it felt like a storyline rather than a story. As in, it felt too over the top for me. However, there was a lot that I did like about the book. Being that there were so many characters, I really appreciated that a lot of them felt developed. No one felt too static or structured and they all carried their own purpose. I loved the development with Lupe and that Karen stayed consistent throughout the plot. I also felt that the emotional pull was there throughout the story. I was able to feel for Tiger, even when I thought she was being outrageous. You’re able to go through this rollercoaster because you bounce from each extravagant instance to the deep thoughts Tiger is experiencing. I do wish that Cake had been a little more involved with calling her out, as I feel a best friend would do at that age especially with Tiger’s typical self being so vastly different, but I also understood the distance created by Tiger’s situation. Overall, I gave it a 3. I enjoyed the book and thought it had value, but I wasn’t in love with it enough where I feel I’d go back to it or actively recommend it to other people.