Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher | Book Review

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher



Reading Group: High School+ and the whole book is about a girl's suicide so if that's not your thing I would stay far away

Personal Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Given Summary: You can’t stop the future. 
You can’t rewind the past.
The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play.

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker—his classmate and crush—who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why.  

Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah's pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.


Cover: The cover of this book shows Hannah on a swing, presumably at a park, which is where her story begins.  Her story starts on a slide, not a swing, but I think the message is the same.  The innocence of a children's park contrasted with a girl who commits suicide.

My Review: I feel like everyone I know read this book in high school and I'm just getting around to it now.  In fact, this book came out 10 years ago, and there's a new addition out with new scenes that I want to read, but I think I'm going to hold off a little while so that this one isn't so fresh and I don't skim through the new one.  I definitely understand why this book was a best seller and why so many people I know have read it, it was wicked good.  The topic is very heavy, and the whole time I felt like shaking Hannah and telling her to let Clay help her.  I loved that it was stories about the past and that Hannah was already dead.  I didn't like that Hannah killed herself, but that was the whole point of the book.  What I mean is that if Hannah was missing and it was unclear if she were dead or not and it seemed like Clay was in a race against time only to find Hannah killed herself, I don't think I would have liked the book.  The tapes were a slap in the face to everyone who received them because they were listening to someone they would never get the chance to apologize to.  And it's a wake-up call to everyone who reads it.  We have people in our lives and no matter what they might mean to us, how we treat them matters.  Our actions may not be a huge moment for them, but if it adds to everything else that person may be going through, it could be the last straw.  Suicide isn't the answer, and I can imagine that people hate this book because Hannah just kind of gave up when she didn't receive the help she didn't straight up ask for, but that's how suicide happens sometimes.  It's easy to look back and see everything the person needed, but it may be impossible at the time.  That's why I absolutely love the ending of this book.  Clay couldn't help Hannah.  He didn't know how to at the time and when he figure it out she was already gone, but he noticed the same actions in Skye, and he didn't let her walk away.  Sometimes awful things need to happen for us to learn something, but what matters is that you do learn something.  I think everyone should read this book because Jay Asher is a great author and this book holds an important message.  I'm glad this is the book I got to start 2017 with.


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