Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher - Book Review (No spoilers)

Summary-

"You can’t stop the future.

You can’t rewind the past.
The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play.

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 why 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 firsthand witness to Hannah’s pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever."

My review-

4 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thirteen Reasons Why is the story of how Hannah Baker's life slowly falls apart, day by day, person by person. In a way, it's about how she lets it fall apart. It's narrated by her through thirteen audiotapes, passed around to everyone who made a difference in her life.

I read the whole book in one evening, which is nice considering how the entire action happens in one night too. Not Hannah's story- that takes place over a couple of years- but Clay listening to the audiotapes as he follows her map around town. Like him, her story kept me hooked too, and I was waiting for his name to come, and to see what part he'd played in her life.

It's a slightly haunting story, and not because it's gross or gory or creepy. It reminds us of how little things we do can have a big impact on someone's life. This book focuses on the snowball effect, with small events piling on top of each other, and rolling into a huge ball of destruction. Self-destruction, in Hannah's case. Everything affects different people differently. Hannah says she had contemplated taking her life many times, after each little event. And after people piled on it, knowingly or unknowingly, she finally did.

I'd expected this book to be darker and more philosophical, but it was actually put quite simply. The writing was very plain, and that put me off in the beginning, but later I realised that it made the book very easy and addicting to read.

At first, the lines of Clay's POV interspersed with the tapes were annoying, as I wanted a continuous narration of her story. Later, I liked that they were mixed in with the tapes, as he provided us background information for some of the events, and helped in connecting the dots. His random thoughts as he listened to Hannah's story also made it feel very real.

It was sad to see how Hannah let everything affect her so deeply. I, and the other characters, sometimes thought the thirteen reasons were not enough for taking her own life. Everyone does stupid things in high school, and if she had only kept away from the people she knew would hurt her, and gotten help, she could've turned her life around. In the end, she admits that she let a few of the reasons happen since she had given in already.

I felt the book could have focused a little bit more on the other options she had, like not taking her life. Instead, it glamourized certain aspects of a suicidal person, like how she pushed Clay away despite the mutual liking, the audiotapes mysteriously showing up on people's doorsteps, and giving her bike away to Tony because she thought she could trust him with it. The plot was interesting, though, and I found myself excited to find out what the next reason was going to be.

The thirteen were all interconnected somehow- the snowball effect again- and all of them linked together was what made her give up in the end. I enjoyed the story, and the simple writing style made it a quick read.