Review: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

genre: realistic fiction
age: YA
rating: 7/8 tentacles

Clay Jensen walks around the town listening to audio cassette tapes that Hannah Baker recorded before she committed suicide. On the first tape, Hannah announces that thirteen people have played a role in her suicide and that the tapes should be sent to each one of them. When Clay receives the tapes, he knows he must be on them and frantically tries to remember what he might have done to earn a mention. As he listens, he dreads the moment he’ll hear Hannah say his name.

I read this book in one sitting.

The narration via tape/listener format is a bit unconventional and is a clever way of adding a bit of mystery and suspense to the story, since we already know how it ends. Wanting to know what the thirteen people did to Hannah and why Clay, who was only ever a friendly acquaintance to her, is on the tapes at all kept me intrigued. Allowing the dead girl to narrate creates an interesting dynamic. Hannah gets the chance to explain herself to everyone she believes played a roll in her decision to die and she gives the people who knew her a chance to understand—something many people who have lost loved ones never get. Readers listen to Hannah with Clay and his reactions to what she says on her tapes add new perspective.

The story was sad, but not in a cheap, melodramatic, touchy-feely kind of way. I grew to like Hannah as I read and found myself hoping for some kind of twist in the end where we’d find out she only let her classmates believe she’d killed herself so that she could hide away while her tapes were passed around and then come back at the end and all the bad people would be exposed and punished and everyone would be nicer to Hannah and she and Clay could be friends. I know it’s ridiculous, and I didn’t actually expect it to happen, but I didn’t want Hannah to be dead. Knowing that she is dead through all that we learn about her lends a certain hopelessness to the story. As Clay grows to understand what Hannah went through, he gets to know her in a way he never did while she lived and now—now that she finally has confided in people through her tapes—he sees all the ways he could have helped her. But what good is this knowledge and understanding when she’s already gone?

Jay Asher admits his intention to convey a message with this book, but he does so very tactfully, without sacrificing the story to it. We feel the message as Clay feels it because it is expressed on an emotional level rather than put directly into words. It’s the kind of message, and story, that will stay with you.