Thirteen Reasons Why
Author: Jay Asher
AUDIOBOOK
Published: October 18, 2007
Dates Read: July 9-13, 2016
My Rating: 4 Stars
Book Summary from Amazon:
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:
Thirteen Reasons Why is a powerful book. I listened to the book in audio form which was the perfect choice. You get the reasons why Hannah committed suicide from her in her own voice. I found the choice of cassette tape very interesting and different!! I didn’t realize that teenagers knew what cassette tapes were!! (I may have missed the reason why cassette tapes were used as I was listening to this while I was driving in the car). The narrators who performed Clay and Hannah were PERFECT! They expressed all the emotion the characters had. You could really feel the torment Clay had as he listened to the tapes and wondered why he was sent them. The anguish and anger he felt towards the end. Hannah as well.
The whole story comes down to the ripple effect. And each story is connected to the other. Some of the reasons/stories were better than others. It was sad in some ways as you know from the beginning that Hannah did commit suicide. Her story comes in her own words, but you have to wonder how did no one see the signs that she showed of a girl in trouble. By the end of the book you can feel how much Clay has changed.
I recommend Thirteen Reasons Why and definitely recommend the audio form. Audio is the perfect medium for this book!