Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

I've been wanting to have a review for this book. Now just to tell, you I read this book in one night, just when I bought it. That was how amazing this book is. Well, this is no supernatural love story like the previous books that I have read. But this book just captures me so intensely. Thirteen Reasons Why also brings up an issue that teenagers face around the world.

Now the synopsis,

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 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 first-hand witness to Hannah’s pain, and learns the truth about himself – a truth he never wanted to face.

You can pretty much get a picture in your head on what is going to happen in the story. Clay Jensen simply gets these 13 tapes that Hannah recorded before she died. Each of these tapes reveals confessions, feelings, and stories from Hannah which she has kept bottled up inside her for so long. And let me tell you, Hannah's words from the tapes were so haunting and intense. Once again, I could feel chills in my body as I read, I wonder how much more intense it will be if I actually heard those tapes.'

Every second I was with Clay during the story, I was so captured into the words. It was pure suspense really, it was so great that I can't just turn the pages fast enough. Before I knew it I was finished with the book.

The things that Hannah went through with different situations, different people in her life was explained so honestly, some of those things were so relatable, and it was so painful reading some of her experiences. I salute Jay Asher and his excellent writing in the book. I connected with Hannah, I felt her and I also felt some empathy for Clay, just so it's clear, he cared about Hannah. I love how the story developed, how every word just gets so intense. This story is played in two different perspectives, Hannah and Clay. It was really interesting to see these two perspectives melted together.

I learnt a lot from this book, and it has really woken me up and gave me more insight to some of life's principles. As I said the issue that surfaced from this book is teenage suicide, and I loved how Jay Asher is speaking to all of us about it through the story, it was very appealing to me. From this book I learnt that, we can just never know how we can affect other people, especially when they're already in so much pain, and how we are (sometimes unknowingly) adding more to their pain. I was able to see how the seemingly little things various people in her tapes have done to her can lead to her reasons for committing suicide. Those individuals could have just changed their actions, their attitudes, their behavior.

But us humans can be a little insensitive and we don't know how our actions can affect other people. I honestly wanted to help her, I could relate to her. I desperately wanted to help her and tell her to have faith, and all this would pass. But in this book, everybody else was ignorant, they never helped her, and that's why it had to tragically end.

So, from this book I really wanted to change my ways. I want to treat people as well as how I want them to treat me. I also want to help people in my life who are going through the hard obstacles life is giving. I highly recommend this book and I hope that people will gain awareness about this issue around them before a similar disaster like this happens.

xoxo,

Maya.

Grade : A+