How to Make Friends with the Dark

By: Kathleen Glasgow

Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Kathleen Glasgow

From The New York Times best-selling author of Girl in Pieces comes a novel about love and loss and learning how to continue when it feels like you're surrounded by darkness that Karen M. McManus, The New York Times best-selling author of One of Us Is Lying, calls "rare and powerful".

Here is what happens when your mother dies.

It's the brightest day of summer, and it's dark outside. It's dark in your house, dark in your room, and dark in your heart. You feel like the darkness is going to split you apart

That's how it feels for Tiger. It's always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger's mother dies. And now it's Tiger, alone.

Here is how you learn to make friends with the dark.

"Stunning and beautifully written." (HelloGiggles)

"A rare and powerful novel, How to Make Friends with the Dark dives deep into the heart of grief and healing with honesty, empathy, and grace." (Karen M. McManus, New York Times best-selling author of One of Us Is Lying and Two Can Keep a Secret)

"Breathtaking and heartbreaking, and I loved it with all my heart." (Jennifer Niven, New York Times best-selling author of All the Bright Places and Holding Up the Universe)

©2019 Kathleen Glasgow (P)2019 Listening Library

Critic reviews

“A rare and powerful novel [that] dives deep into the heart of grief and healing with honesty, empathy, and grace.” (Karen M. McManus, New York Times best-selling author of One of Us Is Lying)

“In this raw, powerful, and heartbreaking meditation on loss and grief, Glasgow writes with unflinching beauty. We meet Tiger Tolliver at her most broken - at her darkest moment - and yet, somehow, [she] teaches us how to let the light in.” (Julie Buxbaum, New York Times best-selling author of Tell Me Three Things)

“Breathtaking and heartbreaking, and I loved it with all my heart.” (Jennifer Niven, New York Times best-selling author of All the Bright Places)

beautiful as always!

my second book I've listened to by Kathleen Glasgow and it was just as incredible as the first (Girl In Pieces) the narrator was nice to follow and I enjoyed the inflections and tones she used. the story was painfully beautiful and made me think a lot. I highly recommend to all audiences.

powerful

powerful in its story and characters. offers some really good thoughts on death and grieving.tells important untold stories

Amazing Story

this book is amazing I could not stop listening and sobbed at the ending. the feelings of grief and trauma are very realistic.

Very sad story

I didn’t like how she said my mother died a million times…. the narrator sound nasally like she had a cold a lot and her pace of reading could speed up a little bit.

It hit home (losing a loved one)

I wasn’t sure why I was drawn to this book. I’m glad I read it. This book (what I paid attention to more) talks about dealing of losing some and the journey of going through grief. I related to this book so much because I lost my daughter in a house fire all of a sudden. I knew every emotion the character was feeling. I was so into this book, that I had to tell myself “this isn’t real”. But that’s how you know it’s a good book, when it takes you places and it makes it feel real. Ms. Glasgow please make more of these books! This is absolutely my favorite book of all time!

HARD FOR ME TO LISTEN TO, BUT VERY GOOD…

This was, in many ways, an excellent book. In other ways, I found myself struggling through it. Struggling perhaps because it’s told from a 16-year-old girl’s point of view, which is rather immature. I’m really not sure. Maybe is was just the subject matter…

In places the book felt like it lagged. Grace has an obsession with TIME. She kept saying things like, “It’s been 64,594 seconds since my mother died.” After a while that started to annoy me.

As someone who has lost two young children and two husbands, I have an intimate understanding of grief; a unique perspective of it. Experiencing it four times puts one in a club nobody wants to belong to. This book is very accurate about the many ways grief sneaks up on you, even LONG after you’ve lost someone you love dearly — how a sight, sound, smell (smells are very powerful triggers) or a memory can set one off. They can cause one to say, do and act in ways one would not normally act.

In this way, I related completely to Grace. Throughout the book, I found myself wondering, “How on earth does a 16-year-old, with no real life experience to draw from, and no relatives to rely on, make sense of losing the ONLY person she has in her life? Her MOTHER?” My mother and I were always like oil and water. My grandparents raised me. I was so very close to my grandmother. There are certain smells, even after all these years, that can stop me in my tracks and make me cry (Jergen’s Original Almond & Cherry Hand Lotion can reduce me to a puddle of water every time). I could FEEL Grace’s pain when she was sitting in the hospital, WILLING her mother to wake up, to be be alive and be her mother again. The author did a superb job painting pictures throughout the book to make readers understand the depth of Grace’s pain and of feeling lost. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose your only parent at the tender age of 16, having no other relative to go to, being pulled from the only home you’ve ever lived in and then being thrust into the scary world of foster care — through no fault of your own; so full of grief already and now having no familiar home of your own and no idea of where you are even going to sleep that night. Grace had no power, no control and no voice in anything that was happening to her. One morning she went off to school just like she always did. That afternoon it was like she had fallen down a rabbit hole and woken up in Alice’s seat in Wonderland.

Then Grace’s world is rocked again when she finds out she has a dad in prison she never knew about as well as a half sister, only 20-years-old who is now to be her guardian. In a lot of ways, Grace is more mature and more capable than the sister. I found myself holding my breath, praying this young woman was not going to let Grace down and disillusion and hurt her even further. The sister is young, brassy, mouthy and didn’t seem the least bit happy about being there for Grace.

For the most part, I found this book depressing, but given the subject material, how could it be otherwise? The book was also thought provoking, spot-on and insightful.

Halfway through the book I debated whether I would finish it or not. Three-quarters of the way through, I found I couldn’t NOT finish…I HAD to know what happened to Grace and whether she came to a place in her life where she could begin putting the building blocks of a new life in place for herself. I found the ending to be rather satisfying.

But, I would like to know WHY someone someone didn’t force Grace to take that awful, stinky, ugly dress off and BURN it?!😳

Valuable and thought provoking. But the cussing! Yikes!

Overall, I loved it. Well written and believable of a 16 year old voice. The performance is great! I just wish that the cussing was not so prevalent. Yes, if I lost my parents at 16, cussing would happen. But, the amount in the book is such that I don’t know if I want to share it with my 17 year old granddaughter that lost her Mom. A few, well placed (lol) swear words would have been more powerful, and much less distracting.

So good

I loved this book so much. I’ve read 3 of her books in a very short time and they are all so good, books that will stick with me for a long time.

A warm blanket story

I thought this story was beautiful and eye opening to what people and kids can go through and feel when their life gets flipped upside down. Nothing will ever be the same, sometimes things feel like you will always be in a hole, and that's ok. There will still be moments of happiness and joy, yet you learn to live with the hole in your heart and carry it dearly.

heartbreaking and brilliant

this book pulls you along the whole way. raw and familiar. kathleen glasgow writes with her heart.