Buy from…. View all retailers. Visit Jay at: myspace. Also by Jay Asher. Praise for Thirteen Reasons Why. A stealthy hit with staying power. Related titles. Little Women. Pride and Prejudice.
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief Book 1. The Outsiders. Dear Evan Hansen. Val Emmich , Steven Levenson. One Of Us Is Lying. The Prison Healer. David Levithan and Jennifer Niven. All the Bright Places. Anything But Fine. The Fault in Our Stars. Jane Eyre. Undercover Princess. Bluey: Christmas Swim.
Our top books, exclusive content and competitions. I have three younger siblings. My sisters are seventeen and fifteen; my brother is twelve. My sisters and each and every one of their friends have watched this fucking show.
I begged my brother not to watch it, even though all of his friends have seen it. Do you understand that? Do you see what the stakes of this are? Every student in every middle and high school in America will be told to watch this show.
TAPE 4: Having problems? Just kill yourself. The only potential solution offered within the narrative is suicide. And, as I talked about earlier, it works out pretty fucking well for Hannah Baker. Pick a lane: is this show intense and important, bringing attention to under-discussed issues in a serious and mature way, or do you want to know which character you are based on your cupcake preferences? The show gives trigger warnings. My friend, who has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts, and is triggered by sexual assault, had a series of panic attacks due to this show.
But she finished it - against my urging - because she thought it would give some important message or theme to the audience watching it. But it doesn't. And she put herself through that for nothing. Hannah has reasons for committing suicide.
It feels like there are no bright spots and no way out. The difference? Everybody feels like Hannah Baker does. Everybody has the humiliating moments and regrets that, like, haunt them before they sleep every night. But not everybody has severe depression. It both reduces the trauma of having depression and indicates suicide as an option for people who may have never considered it otherwise.
Making the guidance counselor a villain is maybe one of the most irresponsible attempts at drama in this stupid fucking narrative. Teenagers everywhere: This book and show are total fucking bullshit. Your guidance counselors know exactly what to do. If you feel safe to confide in a guidance counselor, do it.
TAPE 9: The experts say fuck this. TAPE Say the word depression. How goddamn hard is it? Fuck your quasi-advocacy. TAPE This is an instruction manual. Check my notifications, see one from The Washington Post. Feel awful for that poor vulnerable kid, but also think, Of course.
A year-old in Peru committed suicide and left tapes. TAPE Look at all these beautiful teens. It just feels especially significant when you think about how smugly this show pats itself on the back. TAPE That goddamn ending. This show just makes no fucking sense. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck this book, this show, Jay Asher, and anyone who had any part in bringing it into existence.
Nov 08, Miranda Reads rated it did not like it Shelves: finer-books-club-reading-chall , audiobook. Hannah was so brave, she dealt with life the best way she could Blah, blah, blah. Are you sitting down? Good, cause things are about to get ranty. You are completely and utterly entitled to your opinion on this novel - just like I'm e Wow.
You are completely and utterly entitled to your opinion on this novel - just like I'm entitled to hate it with every fiber of my being. Sorry, it's Me Time Now. The Message to the Target Audience - aka just kill yourself. As an year-old adult, I am able to read this book and take a step back to truly appreciate the full wrath of Hannah. She's able to absolutely crumble the lives of the bullies, extract sweet revenge on her ex-friends and even get the boy she likes to admit that he really, really likes her.
And how does she do that? By killing herself. Let me repeat that - she's able to accomplish all her wildest dreams By. And the target audience?
Kids who are already thinking of suicide and are curious to see what happens after. And how does the author a grown adult advise them? Just kill yourself and everything will be better after you die. I cannot begin to express how furious that made me. Okay, okay. I will admit that there is another message - one of accepting, embracing and truly caring for your peers before something tragic happens Well, Hannah only had to off herself for this to happen. Kill yourself and the world becomes a better place.
Glamorous Suicide - aka suicide is a wondrous method to bring about change. This is in a somewhat similar vein to the previous - but did anyone else notice how beautiful and poetical her suicide was? How all the bullies were cowed. How all her friends regretted not appreciating her when she was alive. How everyone felt bad about not being nicer. Even her suicide was a graceful fade-to-black. The book doesn't show any negative repercussions for her actions - just that everything is better after she's gone.
And while maybe some kids may react the same as the ones portrayed in this book, I'd wager that most teens out there won't fall perfectly into the, "Oh-poor-Hannah-such-a-tragic-little-victim" category.
Most teens won't have the self-reflection and emotional awareness shown in this novel. She'll become a footnote, a blip on their radar, and they'll move on.
Just because they did some grand, meaningful gesture, does not mean everything they did is given the rose-tinted glasses.
And what Hannah did was absolutely inexcusable. From my admittingly untrained eye, Hannah experiences neither of these. And I believe that if the author wanted us to see either one of those cases, he would have made that abundantly clear. Which makes Hannah's premeditated revenge odd, to say the least. She picks out thirteen people who she's perceived wronged her and sets about to find the most hurtful and vengeful way to ruin their lives.
She wants to make her suicide count by destroying these other teen's lives so thoroughly that they become traumatized and absolutely terrified for the rest of their days. So, who are these life-ruiners you ask? Who are these absolute monsters who made Hannah's life a living hell? Pushing her every day closer to oblivion?
She and Hannah drifted apart, just like millions of girls throughout high school She's trying to pin her suicide on a teenage guy who said she has a nice ass. And he failed. He failed her, her parents and the school. To expect one man to completely turn around a suicidal girl especially one who premeditates her suicide to such an extent that she uses it as a weapon against other kids is in my opinion horribly unrealistic.
And that's the thing that everyone seems to forget - these people who "caused" her suicide are kids. Teenagers with their own troubles, trials and tribulations.
They're wading through the murky waters of high school with as much direction as Hannah. And in her anger, fury and spite, she puts them all on the same playing field. The peeping Tom and rapist somehow contributed equally to the guy who stole the compliments from her compliment box. Apparently, no one commenting about your haircut is just as likely to send you into a suicidal spiral as privacy violations.
Were you Raped? I will admit there were some of the kids that had it coming i. But, instead of going to the authorities and actually doing something about this, Hannah just outs them in one of her tapes.
And, it gets better, she never sends a tape to the rapist. Instead, she sends it to her ex-friend, the girl who was drunk and barely conscious throughout the rape, and Hannah blames her suicide on her. AND what's Hannah's interpretation? You, ex-friend, caused my suicide cause you didn't want to be friends for life. Dropping Hannah like a hot tamale was obviously the right choice. B Can you even begin to imagine learning that happened to you while your so-called friend was hanging out in the closet of the same room?
And what was Hannah doing? Having a tipsy mental breakdown because A the boy she liked her tried to kiss her and B when she said no, he stopped. Literally all Hannah had to do was step out of the closet and he'd be scared off. But noooooo, Hannah decides to make the suicide tapes LONG after all the evidence has been washed away to let everyone know that she's the victim.
That SHE deserves the pity and sympathy. This is the sort of revenge Hannah decides to extract on these teens. It's unforgivable. I can't believe I wasted my time with this. This is my interpretation of this novel. Is it the right one? Maybe and maybe not. If this book is perfect in your eyes, if it really saved you, I am not discounting that experience. This book has a LOT of potential to bring about difficult discussions but I feel that the way it is written is problematic to say the least.
But again, this is one take on the novel. Audiobook Comments The one thing I couldn't fault this book on was the choice of narrators. Joel Johnstone and Debra Wiseman were absolutely perfect throughout this book. The way they played off of each other, the way they conveyed emotions - amazing through and through.
It is told from the perspective of Clay, but is mostly about the life of Hannah - a girl who recently killed herself. After her death, Clay receives a set of cassette tapes on which Hannah explains the thirteen reasons why she decided to kill herself.
And he is one of them. It is extremely compelling - unputdownable almost - but a problem many readers have is that the book relies on your sympathy for Hannah to effectively relay its message, and yet Hannah comes off as bratty, selfish and ofttimes over-sensitive. Many of her "reasons" are things that everyone has experienced at some point and people generally file those under "bad days" and definitely don't kill themselves because of it.
But actually, I completely understood and sympathized with Hannah. As a suicide survivor, I even related to her at times. And, though I don't attempt to speak for everyone, I feel in a position to attest that there can be something bratty and selfish about suicide. I think this book captured a certain feeling very well and I disagree with those who thought Hannah wasn't realistically suicidal.
It's true that nobody kills themselves because they get stood up, and nobody kills themselves because some douche groped their ass, and nobody kills themselves because of a mean rumour People like to look for clear-cut reasons that make sense.
They want Hannah to give a good reason why she killed herself. But, in reality, it so rarely is one big reason you can point to. Most of the time, the little things all build up, day after day, one small thing after another, until the little reasons all blend into a single feeling of hopelessness.
That is what this book is about. And it's also about taking responsibility for your actions and understanding how your small selfish acts can affect someone else. I did not have an issue believing in or finding sympathy for Hannah. My only real issue with this book was Clay, the revelation about him, and the way he viewed the truth about Hannah. Clay changes his mind about Hannah based on what he hears and decides she did not deserve to be slut-shamed because the rumours weren't true.
But - would she have deserved the treatment any more if she had done what the rumours said? And I wish the book had taken the opportunity to address that. But otherwise, this is a creative pageturner, even if it seems a bit strange that cassette tapes were being used in I liked it a lot and it really made me think. View all 98 comments.
And I honestly don't know what all the rave is about. I heard so many great things about this novel, that's why I read it. While this was a good book, well written and all…the plot was just not good enough—no, the reasons leading to Hannah Baker killing herself were not believable enough for me. I mean sure, they did some horrible things to her in high school, that doesn't mean you should just go off and commit suicide. As far as I'm concerned, those kinds of situations happen to everyone.
And I don't believe for one second that no one noticed that she wanted to commit suicide. What about her haircut? Didn't the author mention that the teacher passed out a flyer called "The Warning Signs of a Suicidal Individual?
What about "Giving away possessions? Didn't Hannah leave an anonymous note telling the teacher that? After she told Mr. And he didn't stop her? Come on, they couldn't have been that dumb! Hannah, above all, just sounded whiny. And I just couldn't sympathize with her character. And committing suicide and then blaming people for it is just a stupid excuse for killing herself. She was the one that decided to kill herself, not them—not anyone.
She just needed someone to blame. And poor Clay! If Clay wasn't one of the reasons Hannah killed herself, then why put him through the agony? Why give him the tapes? She could've just written him a letter.
And Tony! Hannah put even the ones that had nothing to do with her in pain. For example: what did Tony do to her? Because I know he was hurting, too. He felt helpless because he couldn't have saved her. One second I'm reading in Clay's point of view, the next Hannah's. Also, I think suicide is a very serious issue so I didn't really buy Jay Asher's portrayal of Hannah's feelings. If someone wanted to commit suicide, their emotion had to be deeper, stronger than just hatred and petty resentment for having a bad reputation in High School.
Therefore, I thought Hannah's emotions weren't very serious, even childish and overly dramatic at times. And after finishing the books I was like, "seriously?! That's why she killed herself?! This was like telling them, "what the heck, end your life if you're so miserable. Starring Selena Gomez. Also, if you want to know more about Hannah's reasons, read message 6. I figured this deserved a real review. I'm a bipolar chick.
I'm a girl who has struggled with suicidal thoughts since she was nine years old at the very latest. And I just do not buy 13RW's representation of a suicidal girl. The very premise of the book is flawed to me; you don't kill yourself for REASONS, you kill yourself because there is a bug in your brain gnawing at you and sucking out any valuable thought you've ever had, and I never saw that kind of bug in Hannah.
I saw a girl who killed h I figured this deserved a real review. I saw a girl who killed herself because boys were mean to her, and I think that if you reversed the sexes and made it a boy who killed himself for Hannah's reasons, no one would have bought it.
It's a symptom of a larger epidemic you see all the times in discussions of girls with mental illness. Boys are legitimately fucked up and have genuine struggles with mental health, but girls are hysterical. Hannah's depression is entirely circumstantial, as is her suicide, and I just do not buy it. Not to mention I think it's a complete cop-out to have Clay be the only guy on the list who didn't fuck her up. It was compelling, I'll give it that.
I read it in one night about five years ago. Apr 06, Emma Giordano rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobooks. I had heard very mixed things for some time and it seemed a lot of readers were very divided on this book, but I personally really loved it. Maybe the author did not go about things in the best way in my personal opinion but I do think the message that your actions influence others in ways you may not realize came across well.
The path to get there was not perfect, but the execution was. I also despise the reviews on here saying that "Hannah had no excuse to kill herself, she was not depressed enough and it wasn't believable for her to commit suicide because of these reasons. Work on your stigma regarding people with mental illness.
I am SO SO SORRY that you feel someone who is a victim of bullying, sexual harassment,t sexual assault, who reaches out for help and is told to "move on" is not a "good enough excuse to kill themselves" but I am NOT HERE for delegitimizing one's personal suffering because it wasn't something you have experienced. Depression manifests in a multitude of ways. People commit suicide for a variety of reasons. I've been diagnosed with clinical depressed and spent most of my adolescence in a cycle of self harm and suicidal ideation.
Can I related to Hannah Baker? No, I cannot. Our stories are very different. But that does not mean it is impossible for her experience to exist, or that others will be unable to relate to what this poor girl went through. If you view life through a singular lens, I promise, you will continually be let down by those who's lives do not perfectly mirror your own. I also want to note that I DO see why this book has upset so many people.
I really do see the perspective of others who disagree with this book and don't feel it achieved what it was trying to, I just personally feel differently. It was a great experience and I'm glad I read it! View all 19 comments. Jan 30, C. I still hate it. My review is getting a lot of traffic atm so I'm just going to do a little update and leave you some links to better reviews that tell how problematic the story is: Tweet thread on the problematic show.
Article on why it's dangerous. Goodreads review on why it's seriously bad. I'm sorry my review is more distraught and emotional than analytical and full of logical reasoning. I don't care if you like this book, but be respectful of people who say it's triggering, problematic, and sends a dangerous message about romanticising suicide and condoning revenge suicide.
I have also had to talk someone down from killing themselves and let me tell you: It was the worst moment of my life. I still nearly cry when I think about it. Because if they'd gone ahead to kill themselves, would I be to blame? Any book that says that yes I would be to blame like this book is saying is poisonous. Please don't read it if you've had suicidal thoughts or know people who've committed suicide. You won't be encouraged. You'll be triggered. But this one?
I hated it. I hated the message the author was sending. I think it was wrong and cruel. Obviously, this is just my opinion! But I will enver recommend this book. To a certain extent, that can be true. She was just as guilty, and more so, then any of the kids that teased her, because she then ruined and destroyed 13 lives. I hate that. I hate the message this book sends. I hate how Clay even GOT the tapes.
It was totally against the rules she set up. I was so angry and so distressed when I finished this book, it almost turned me off reading. And this made me hate them oh-so-much. This book is in no way okay. View all 72 comments. Co-Worker: "My kid just read this book and loved it. You are a reader, right? If you haven't read it, you should read it. It's about suicide. Hold on lemme check. So if you are someone who loved this book and loved Hannah, you should probably pass on my review because it might piss you off.
Hannah's ridiculous 13 tape manifesto is all about laying people out for not seeing or simply failing to care how their actions affected Hannah. She plainly says that she asked Courtney over to her home--not to befriend her--but to help her catch Tyler peeping in her window with his camera. Also, later she describes how she engages a random girl with whom she's never spoken to before in conversation in order to look beyond the girl's shoulder and catch Zach stealing notes out of her "Encouragement bag.
How do you think Courtney felt being asked over to your house simply to playact for a peeping Tom? On and on Hannah rants at everyone about how dare they do this and how dare they do that to her - but seriously - watching her hypocritically commit similar actions of insensitivity and constantly put herself in asinine situations completely undermined any sympathy I had for her. Do I think it's fucked up that Tyler peeped into her window a situation that felt totally contrived?
Is it fucked up she witnessed a rape and felt guilt for not acting to stop it? Same with the stop sign situation. But by the time most of those things happen, she has already dug her own grave in her mind.
AND she did nothing to try and solve her own problems. Being a female teenager especially sucks. But what Hannah failed to realize is that almost every other character in her story was just trying to do the same thing as her: get by and get through. I'm all for being mindful of your words and trying to be aware of how your actions affect others; however, you can only do your best--but to think constantly about how your every word and action might affect someone else can result in complete paralyzation.
I'm not anti-suicide and I'm not railing against Hannah for choosing that course. I'm just not down with the 13 tapes vilifying other people for not thinking about how every move they made affected Hannah.
You can't control what other people do and how they act, but you can control how you respond. View all 83 comments. Shelves: would-rec , suicide , young-adult , contemporaryfiction , , absolutely-must-read.
Jay Asher just completely blew me away. View all 36 comments. I absolutely loved this book. What an eye opener. In Thirteen Reasons Why we listen to audio tapes that was sent to 13 people by Hannah who committed suicide, to explain her reasons why.
First I want to mention that to all the reviewers who say that her reasons weren't "good enough" for her to kill herself, you're wrong. Everyone doesn't cope with situations the same way, and problems that may seem minimalistic to you, can send the next person into depression.
We all have our own ways of working I absolutely loved this book. We all have our own ways of working through our issues, and some have a much harder time than others.
These were her reasons to commit suicide, which were enough for her, who are we to judge? Personally I thought it was amazingly done and very realistic.
There weren't any embellishments or glorifications, it was true portrayal of teen suicide. We go through the story with Clay while he is listening to Hannah's tapes. I really though this was a great way to pace the story and build up the suspense. And every single page is full of suspense. I really could have stayed up all night reading it. The story contains a lot of emotions; Intense and raw emotions.
We go through them with Hannah as well as Clay, simultaneously. Hearing her tapes makes us realize that our actions, however small, can have a whirlwind of an effect on others.
Yes, sending those tapes may have been a little mean. But obviously there was a lot going on with Hannah and she needed to get this out. I don't condone her for it, but I can understand why she thought it necessary.
It's not an easy subject to talk about, and suicide is not something to take lightly. Asher did an amazing job of taking a sensitive subject and writing a very touching, mesmerizing novel. View all 25 comments. Things that happened to make Hannah Baker kill herself: 1. Someone made up a rumour that she let a boy put his hands under her shirt in a park.
Someone was taking pictures of her through her bedroom window and she reacted by posing with a friend as though they were giving each other sensual massages Someone asked her to drive them to and from a party. Someone stole the compliments out of her comp Things that happened to make Hannah Baker kill herself: 1.
Someone stole the compliments out of her compliment box. All these and other teenage angst happen which Hannah deems unforgivable. And then she witnesses a rape that she could easily have stopped but didn't. And suddenly she's like "oh God the room is spinning my emotions I'm like so drunk and can't see through my tears So basically when she allows a classmate to be raped in front of her it's fine because, like, her head wasn't in the right place or something, but when other people don't acknowledge her new haircut it's because they are purposely attacking her and they deserve to be punished.
This book makes a mockery of suicide. We don't ever get a sense that Hannah is depressed. It's more like she's doing it as some messed up experiment. I found her to be way too amused by her own vicious stunt to feel even a shred of empathy for her. It's a book about a pathetic, selfish witch with a severe lack of moral fibre who kills herself and then sends out sick and twisted recordings to thirteen people telling them it was their fault so that what?
They can feel guilty for the rest of their lives because they weren't the nicest person ever to Hannah one time back when they were a teenager? I would argue it is much more severe then any bullying Hannah was on the receiving end of. Ultimately, Thirteen Reasons Why waters down suicide to make it look like an awesome revenge tactic rather than an incredibly serious and sensitive issue that many teens are dealing with every day. It is not a game!
Nobody makes a TV show about you. Your classmates will only think of you ten years later when their memory is triggered and they go "ah, yes, a girl at my school killed herself once Pass the salt please. View all 78 comments.
Which makes me feel a little conflicted about the rating. This book will stay with me for a while, it made me think , but it also had its flaws. I thought the novel was based on an original and great concept. While that is without doubt the perfect way to tell this story that can probably be enjoyed even more in an audiobook format , I sometimes found it hard to distinguish their voices. I read a sentence, and when I went over it too quickly, I sometimes had to check back if it was in bold or italic to find out who actually said what.
While Clay certainly was a sweet guy, I found him to be almost too nice to be true and compared with Hannah, his character and voice felt rather flat. Also, I expected this story to make me sad and touch me deeply because, after all, it is a story about missed opportunities, about a life ending much too soon, about guilt and grief. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I wanted to know her story, to get an idea what made her feel so depressed and alone.
I read in quite some reviews that people thought her reasons to commit suicide were shallow. Sometimes small things add up to each other, and when you suffer from depression, as Hannah clearly did, even everyday life can be too much for you to take. It can make everything feel like a chore. Yet, I also found it difficult to understand why Hannah went to such lengths to record her tapes and make sure everybody received them.
It seemed to be more about getting back at the people who hurt her than about closure and explanation. Those people did her wrong, no question, but do they deserve what they got? She also had her faults, made wrong decisions and — in the end — gave up. Knowing exactly why somebody killed himself and what role you yourself played in his decision?
Or living with the fact that you will never find out what caused his suicide and that your questions will never be answered? View all 42 comments. I'm entitled to mine and you're entitled to yours and they don't affect one another in any way. Do you know people who are suicidal? Has anyone close to you tried to kill themselves or had someone close to them kill themselves? My best friend growing up, her father committed suicide. I hope she never reads this book.
People who are clinically depressed, people who feel like they have no other option but to kill themselves, don't do it because of a tiny, trivial reason. They do it because there is an imbalance in their brain, or something so horrific happened to them that they feel like they can't live in their own skin anymore. If we hadn't had a glimpse inside of Hannah's head, I would have thought that maybe she was in a such a dark place that she felt like she had no other option but to kill herself.
However, we hear Hannah voice throughout the story through her tapes. She doesn't sound depressed. She sounds vindictive and petty. Why doesn't she think about how her tapes could make someone else kill themselves, huh? To make it seem like a friend or loved one, doing something minor or mundane, could cause a suicide is a horrible seed to plant.
It takes years for loved ones of suicide victims to stop blaming themselves. Does my childhood friend deserve to question, "If I just cleaned my room or didn't yell at my dad that one last time, would he have not killed himself? Sure, teenagers could be a lot nicer to each other. I'm all for anything that reduces bullying and objectifying of women.
If readers take away that message from this book, than I guess I'm okay with that on some level. But for the reader who struggles with bipolar disorder or clinical depression, the teen with the mom who won't get out of bed, the husband whose wife ODs on pills Don't dissect your life and think about what you could have done differently. Maybe we find out more about Hannah after that point.
I wasn't interested enough to find out. View all 60 comments. I bought "Thirteen Reasons Why" after hearing so much about it on the internet - and from my 3 sons - and I just knew I had to find out what the hype was all about for myself.
Actually I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and found it very compelling so I'm a little apprehensive about leaving a positive review after reading so many negative comments about it, but I suppose it is only everyone's opinion.
I started reading this book at bedtime and whenever I woke up during the night and throughou I bought "Thirteen Reasons Why" after hearing so much about it on the internet - and from my 3 sons - and I just knew I had to find out what the hype was all about for myself. I started reading this book at bedtime and whenever I woke up during the night and throughout the next day when I wasn't reading it, I was constantly thinking about the characters - it had such a pull to it.
I didn't have a problem with the writing style at all, the unique way in which the author, Jay Asher, created a dual narrative between Hannah on the tapes and Clay listening to them and commenting was very unusual and new to me, and I really took to it - it played out perfectly in my mind. I imagine everyone knows the blurb to this book so I won't go into that other than it is aimed at a young adult audience.
Some people believe that Hannah was selfish and petty with a 'I've been badly done to' attitude but who knows when the straw will break the camel's back? We've probably all experienced bad times at senior school at some point or another and know it can have a very profound effect on your emotions at such a vulnerable age. Does the book glorify suicide? Does it make someone want to go out and take their own life?
I have my opinions but you'll have to read the book and decide for yourself. What I do know is - it's a work of fiction and I read it as that, but I'm much older and wiser than most of the average readers of this book and I think that does make a big difference. I don't think I'll be watching the TV show should it make mainstream English TV as it is primarily aimed at a much younger audience and I think I'd rather remember the book is it was originally written.
I would say don't be put off by any of the negative reviews you may come across, I dithered for a while over reading it, but I have to say it's a book that I did enjoy reading and I know will stay with me a long time.
View all 57 comments. I hope no one suicidal or anyone that has seen the effects of suicide ever reads this. Hated this. View all 23 comments. View all 38 comments. This book was very engrossing and suspenseful, but in the end it just pissed me off. I don't know how to put this in more delicate terms, so if I make my case rather bluntly or insensitively, I do so only because I don't want to tiptoe around what I really feel. Basically, I understand why some people turn to suicide as the only option out.
I understand the feeling of helplessness and misery that could make a person decide that taking herself out is the only way to stop the pain. But after experi This book was very engrossing and suspenseful, but in the end it just pissed me off. But after experiencing the aftermath of suicides in my extended family and, more pointedly, in my graduating class in high school, I have erased it as any option I would ever consider for myself.
And even though I understand why people would kill themselves, that does not mean I agree that they are making the right choice. When the suicides happened my senior year, the school was loathe to talk about it except on a student-by-student basis.
They believed that making too much out of the suicide glorified it and encouraged other kids to commit suicide in order to get the same attention.
I don't know that I disagree, but I do know that not providing teenagers with information means they create their own answers, which can be worse. But I also remember that everyone wondered about their personal relationships with the people who died, if seemingly inconsequential statements contributed to the final act of despair. This book is basically saying, "Yes, in fact, your actions are one of the 13 reasons why I killed myself.
Don't get me wrong, the people who Hannah blames for her downward spiral were all jerks to her. But she wasn't the only person in the school tormented by these people. The tapes portray Hannah as the number one target at school, but didn't we all feel that way except for those handful of people who claim to have loved high school and who I will never understand? What makes it worse for Hannah than for anyone else? Why do some of us survive it and she couldn't? Or better yet, what actions of Hannah's, inspired by her own unhappiness, contributed to the despair of another person who may later consider suicide?
I think that the author was trying to say that there is never one single reason for a person to commit suicide, and that we should be aware of how we treat other people because we don't know the power of our own seemingly inconsequential actions. He was telling us to reach out to people who seem alone and vulnerable even if they try to push us away.
I agree with all of this. However, the author failed to make the point that different people deal with life in different ways and have different capacities for dealing with it. He needed to make the point that Hannah wasn't strong to begin with, that she was already emotionally vulnerable or unstable. Because otherwise, everyone who survives high school gossip and cruelty would be a triumph, when really I've found that it's quite commonplace.
Most people did not kill themselves in high school despite 13 or more reasons to do so. I've never been the kind of person who is comforted by thoughts like, "Think how much worse someone else has it.
Your own problems will always seem bigger that anyone else's because they are your own. But the author never explained why these experiences crushed Hannah while others somehow got by. I'm not saying it couldn't happen that way. But why couldn't she - specifically Hannah - handle it? In the end, this book just made me mad because we are led through this narrative in which we succumb to Hannah's interpretation of events and her justification for her death.
If the author's point was to show that the average cruelties of high school, when taken together, can lead someone to suicide, then he also needs to show why it doesn't. I don't believe in sugar-coating life for teenagers, and I don't believe in censoring books because they may "encourage undesirable behavior. And it pisses me off that a book would give me a reaction opposite of what I claim to believe.
Jan 29, Christy rated it really liked it Shelves: audio , ya-challenge , four-stars. I do love books that make me cry and since the book is being made into a Netflix series next month, I thought why not give it a go. Honestly, I have conflicting feelings about the story itself.
However, it was story that I feel will stay with me. It had profound moments and it was a mesmerizing read. As I was listening, I was dying to see who was going to be next, how everything would go down, and waiting for the big WHY to be answered. Shelves: psychological , overrated-as-hell , much-heard-of , reviewed , ya , contemporary. This was even worse than I thought it would be. Hannah, I know you've been treated unfairly and you wanted to get back at the people who wronged you.
But I was totally dumbfounded by this roundabout way of doing so which actually includes you losing your own life in the process. All those preparations and time and planning. Such a waste. And Asher's writing didn't help the matter either: not suspenseful enough. View all 22 comments. I have seen a lot of mixed reviews on this book.
The subject matter - suicide - is controversial. The show they made of this book is controversial. Because of that, I am going to avoid too much commentary on the subject matter and just say that the content of this book is serious and does affect teenagers in different ways. I didn't have the easiest if teenage years, but I made it through okay, so it would be easy for me to say that this story is an overreaction.
But, I would be a fool to not un I have seen a lot of mixed reviews on this book. But, I would be a fool to not understand the we we all different and a cautionary tale like this one could result from the same events that another person might just brush off.
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