Title: Thirteen Reasons Why
Author: Jay Asher
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: 8/10
Recommend to: Perks of Being a Wallflower Fans
Type: Paperback
Date Read: 28th October, 2014
This book is a very hard-hitting read and to me, was very Perks of Being A Wallflower, in the sense that, it deals with a lot problems and many parts of the book is saddening but you don’t cry.
This book is about a girl named Hannah Baker who committed suicide and just before she did, she recorded tapes of her her thirteen reasons (thirteen people) why she killed herself. She then sends the tapes to Reason #1 and they are expected to pass it along and along.
This book really surprised me because I didn’t cry. I just assumed that by the blurb that I was going to cry and I emotionally prepared myself for the sadness coming but it never came. I mean the book was saddening but wasn’t cry-worthy. She did die but the way her death was written about, it just wasn’t tears because we really didn’t know her.
I don’t think this book really was about the characters because I had no emotional attachment to any them. I mean some characters were positioned for us to like them and others were positioned for us to hate them but there was no “I love this character!” and I think that was because the author wanted to focus on the situations and the message of the book and the characters were just there to tell that message.
I found it a bit hard to believe that each person kept passing the cassette tapes on because if I did what they did, I wouldn’t want other people to know, so why would you pass it on? I guess you could argue that they felt guilty but it just struck me as unlikely.
I don’t know how I felt about the way the book was set out because when Hannah was talking it would quickly have one sentence or two about what Clay was doing and I don’t really think those were necessary. Sometimes I liked to know what he was doing and other times, i was just like can we get back to Hannah now?
I like the way the characters were named, I don’t know why but I really liked it.
Even though this book is centred around suicide, I think the main message is regret and chance. To not regret the chance you had to make that person’s life better.
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