Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why 

by Jay Asher

Summary:

THEY SAY dead girls don’t talk, but that’s where they’re wrong. They talk, but most people are too scared to listen. Hannah’s dead. Two weeks after Hannah Baker’s death, Clay Jensen hears her voice one last time- on a “Baker’s dozen” of cassette tapes she made. Seven double sided tapes with thirteen stories of thirteen people-thirteen people who killed her. Clay was mailed Hannah’s obscure suicide note because eh’s one of the reasons. That she died. That she killed herself, one of the reasons she gave up. On the tapes she explained that her death started with a rumor and the reputation the rumor gave her, hilighting the connections between each of her thirteen listeners had with each other. Hannah explains how they slowly crushed her hope, and with it her will to live. The tapes hold some of their darkest secrets, and they must pass them on for fear that Hannah’ll be good on her threat- that the second copy of the tapes will be publically released. Clay is shown her pain, following the map he was mysteriously given-the map of her painful life, and on the way he learns what he did -or didn’t- do that killed her.

Review:

Thirteen Reasons Why is told from Clay’s point of view, though as he listens to Hannah’s first-person POV tale, he becomes merely a vessel the point of which is to convey her thoughts and feelings years, weeks, and mere hours before death. Of course, Clay himself is a part of the story, and his character is used to display the emotions of all thirteen listeners who are responsible for murdering Hannah Baker. I enjoyed this book and appreciated the unique situation that brought the tapes into Clay’s life. The situations leading up to Hannah’s death are very real and are happening every day around the country and the world as well. From all the stress building in her life in today’s world, her suicide would be very plausable. Hannah gives her killers the full story through her eyes, showing them that what my have started as a joke had a huge impact on her life-and death. This book gets an 8/10 because of the realistic way that the writing was put forth, and the interesting idea about the way that the dead follow us after their life.