cover image of 'How to Make Friends With the Dark'I didn’t find this book to be particularly good. The characters are shallow and, for the most part, unlikable. The main character, Tiger, is petty and spineless in the beginning. She has good reason for acting the way she does, since she grew up without much money and without a father, but it still grated on my nerves to read through her self-pitying thoughts. However, she does evolve throughout the course of the book. By the end, she becomes less sheltered and weak and learns how to live without the coddling of her mother, a skill that she is forced to learn once her mother dies and leaves her to the care of foster homes, her sister, and, at one point, a juvenile-detention center.

Tiger’s sister, Shayna, has her good and bad points. She is portrayed as obnoxious and immature when she is introduced, but the author does a good job of slowly revealing layers to the character. Readers learn how, despite her difficult past, being a former alcoholic with an incarcerated father and abusive boyfriend, Shayna makes the effort to be there for her half sister and take care of her.

The characters can often be unlikable, but the author is effective in detailing the destructive effects of grief, especially on someone from an already unstable home. Tiger is a well behaved, quiet girl who is forced into situations for which she is not prepared. She lived her entire life with only her mother and best friend, Cake, to support her.  She cannot process, and isn’t given time to process, only having half of the two people who matter most to her.

Unfortunately, the important message and themes can be overshadowed by the annoying characters, dialogue, and somewhat inaccurate depiction of life as a teenager in this day and age. For example, the author frequently adds in people taking pictures or videos of Tiger when she is in pain, and Tiger will make up the hashtags she imagines they are using. The way in which the author inputs these hashtags got on my nerves and the frequent use was, in my opinion, unnecessary. Furthermore, Tiger’s inner monologues can get repetitive and it becomes hard to feel empathy for her because of her inability to see reason through the cloud of grief obscuring her view. This does help in showing how awful loss can be and how it can lead us to make terrible decisions, but I personally found some of it to be monotonous.

Overall, the book had good intentions and was relatable in some aspects, but it was hard to overlook the characterization and dialogue resembling that of teens in a Disney show.