How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow

Tiger gets in a fight with her mother on the phone and she curses at her before she hangs up.  She figure she'll go home and they'll discuss it and then make up again.  It's just her and her mom in her life and she loves her mother, she'd just like to have a bit more freedom.  Then she finds out her mother died that afternoon...

Delacorte Press sent me an ARC of this book to read for review (thank you).  It will be published April 9th.

This is being advertised as a young adult book but it's a bit hard to take.  She doesn't know who her father is, is an only child, and she gets taken into foster care. She's scared.  She finds out they move her from one home to another depending on vacancies and her behavior.  She's lost without her mom, they did everything together.  All she wants to do is sleep.  At first, they don't let her go back to school.  When she goes back, everyone treats her differently.  She fits in nowhere and it's like she's in darkness and knows no way forward.

This is a pretty intimate look at foster homes, which was chilling to me.  Being orphaned and having lost direction in life would make it even harder.

Then she finds out she has a dad, but he's in jail.  She also has a half-sister and she agrees to take guardianship of Tiger.  But that doesn't work out like planned either.

Tiger gets in more trouble, her sister disappears and it appears she's going to be in juvenile jail for her offenses.  But despite all this trouble, things are looking brighter at the end.  She has her sister back and her new friends rally around.  There's hope for the future...