This book hit entirely too close to home, it is absolutely heartbreaking & touches on very tough subjects. On my tbr since it’s 2019 release & while I’d stopped reading YA many years prior I like this author so I decided to read it anyway. While this book is YA it still touches on very serious & difficult things.
How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
- Category – Young Adult Mental Health
- Length – 421 Pages
- Read Time – 35 Days*
- GR Rating – 3 Stars
*I had to put this book down for a while, it just hit too close to home, having also lost my mother when I was 16 in the same way the main character does, reading it was a stab to the heart I hadn’t prepared for.
Grace “tiger” Tolliver is 16 years old, finishing up her sophomore year of high school. Cozying up with the boy she’s been crushing on, spending time with her friends, living a normal teenage life. Then one day, in an instant her life is torn apart.
Having grown up with only her mother, knowing nothing of her father & having no other family, she becomes a ward of the state the day her mother dies. This book is extremely sad. Knowing first hand what it feels like to lose ones mother at such a young age, it brought tears to my eyes. Grief is life long & that’s what Tiger is forced to begin learning at just 16. It’s heartbreaking. Her new orphan designation adding layers of stress & despair to an already extremely difficult time, further affecting her already fragile mental health. She is shuffled from one foster home to another, while family secrets become exposed, turning Tigers’ life completely upside down. Making her question what she thought she knew of her mother & her upbringing, making her question if she really knew her mother at all.
We go along with Tiger from placement to placement, meeting other children in foster care along the way. Children who have also suffered immense disappointments & difficult situations in their young lives. No two foster homes are the same, while many people hold true kindness in their soul, many others do not. The main topics of this book are familial loss & grief, with critiques of the foster care system woven in. I recommend looking up the trigger warnings for this book before reading!
Thank you for joining me for another review, & as always happy reading.
Hasta la próxima – V
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