Book Review: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Star Rating: 5/5
Title: Thirteen Reasons Why
Author: Jay Asher
Publisher: Penguin
Genre: Mental Health, Contemporary, Suicide
Where to Buy:Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Thriftbooks

Synopsis

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers thirteen cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and crush who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.

    When I first heard about this book I was kind of nervous. I'd never read a book like this before and I didn't know how I'd feel about it. In the first chapter you meet Clay, he is a young guy who is in high school, the high school he attends is in mourning because a student there has taken her life, this student's name is Hannah Baker. Hannah was a good girl, quiet and a good student, so what made her take her life?  I later found out why.

Hannah made these cassette tapes containing the names of people who caused her to be pushed too far. After she made these tapes, she sends them out to the people on the tapes. One of the people is Clay, he had a crush on Hannah for a long time, he just never told her. Clay is very confused however as to why he has received this package.

As the story goes on you kind of think, at first, that Hannah's reasons were kind of "small" and not reasons to commit suicide, but to Hannah they just kept coming and they kept building and building until she just couldn't stand it anymore. Clay discovers, during the story, that certain people he never thought knew Hannah caused her to take her life. One of these people turns out to be his best friend.

I loved the writing in this story and I loved how I connected to Clay and to Hannah. The author makes you feel what Hannah is feeling, sad, anger, happy you feel what she feels as her story unfolds. I felt bad for Clay during this book because Hannah's tapes made him think, made him have flash backs and actually remember certain things about Hannah. Her tapes also made him go a little crazy, he stopped talking to people, he shut himself out from the world when he listened to the tapes on a tape player with headphones, he didn't act like his normal self after the tapes.

This book is a real eye opener, I was bullied in high school and I didn't have any friends by my senior year. I have thought about suicide and I found out that because of the bullying I received, I became a stronger person and I have a thick skin now. I connected to Hannah in that way and I understood why her "small" problems were such a big deal to her. This book was SO great and I'd recommend this book to anyone, it is so heart breaking, but so easy to relate to, which makes it feel real.