A review by kamariannamareads
How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow

dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I’ve had a strange experience with this book. Well… maybe not strange, but certainly new. As I was reading it, I didn’t think I was going to budge on my rating. I thought it was a solid three star book. But after I finished it, and as I reflected on what I read and how it made me feel, I realized it deserved more than a 3 star review.

In How to Make Friends with the Dark, we follow 16-year-old Grace “Tiger” Tolliver in the days and months following her mother’s sudden and unexpected death. Losing a parent, especially so young, is one of the hardest things anyone could ever go through. I’ve gone through it twice already so this is a topic I’m very familiar with. Part of what made me want to read this book was to see if it was going to break me in the same way They Both Die at the End did. (What can I say? I’m a glutton for pain.) And the other part was curiosity about how Glasgow was going to approach this topic. Was she going to get it right? Or was it going to be some weird trauma porn that romanticized grief?

She got it right.

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