13 Reasons Why Paperback – Illustrated, March 7, 2017

As of 2017, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Every year, almost 45,000 people commit suicide, and annually, suicide costs the US about $51 billion. But, aside from all the statistics, aside from the money aspect, those 45,000 victims, are people, with families, friends and lives, and that’s what people seem to forget.Attempting to understand how devastating a suicide can be, without actually experiencing one, can be hard, but, readers are in luck because, there is a new book and movie series (on Netflix) called Thirteen Reasons Why, a true story of Hannah Baker a young girl who killed herself in the early 90’s. Now… this may seem like just another documentary or sci-fi book about someone’s suicide story, but it goes far deeper than that. Within the true story of Hannah Baker, comes a mystery, and an ending of despair and jail time. The book is a cross between what life is like for friends and family of Hannah, after her death, and in a stranger series of events, somehow, Hannah left a collection of tapes filmed by herself, expressing why she killed herself and whose fault it is. But, the story gets even more twisted, within all the tapes Hannah created, are secrets, dark tragic secrets that happened to her a month before she killed herself. These secrets incriminate her own friends, family, and even, the love of her life, Clay Jensen. “You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything. . . affects everything.” ― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why (GoodReads) .My personal opinion on the book and movie Thirteen Reasons Why (because I’ve read & seen both) is that I think the main idea of the story is very powerful. Suicide is not something people can choose to ignore until someone close to them does it, suicide needs to be something everyone thinks about & is cautious about. Becoming a victim, or a grieving friend or family member can happen to anybody in such a short amount of time, and everybody needs to know it isn’t a joke! People really do kill themselves everyday, and people really do go to jail for intentionally or unintentionally causing someone to kill themselves. I believe my opinion of this book compared to other critics is very similar in the fact that almost everyone who has read this book, or heard Hannah Baker’s story, agrees that this needs to be published for everyone to see so that maybe the world can start to grasp the fact that suicide is not a joke. How many more victims does 2017, 18, or so on, need to take for the world to realize bullying, suicide, depression, etc is no joke! It deserves recognition, and suicide should be a real prosecutable crime. I know this to be true because, Common Sense Media says the same, “There are positive messages here about the importance of treating people with kindness -- and about the price of inaction -- that parents and teachers may want to help teen readers think and talk about” (CommonSenseMedia) . In addition, I feel the writer’s style in this book, is very metaphorical. I feel it has to be written this way because Hannah is already gone… so it can not be in present time or even a biography of her life. The author also incorporated the use of, foreshadowing, by including many recurring elements in Hannah’s story, illusions, imagery, and parallelism by showing the parallels Clay, Hannah’s boyfriend finds between him and Hannah.I would recommend this book to anyone in highschool, whether girl or boy, and I’d recommend this book to any parent who has a teenager that is struggling with depression, or not fitting in, or feeling like an outcast. This book contains a lot of good coping mechanisms, and teaches its readers how to look for the red warning signs of someone who is suicidal. Hopefully, with this book and the new series on Netflix becoming more and more popular, more people will realize that suicide is serious and it could just take five seconds out of your day, saying hi to someone, to save someone and make them smile & feel accepted. This book I feel, was intended to appeal to high schoolers, which I feel it achieved because even personally, right after the book & movie released, I saw it all over my Twitter timeline. Thirteen Reasons Why was all my highschool friends could talk about, so I decided to give it a try. This book appeals to high school students because it deals with Hannah Baker, a young American girl in highschool, dealing with drama, depression, bullying, and every other unfortunately, normal aspect of high school. This helps appeal to teenagers all over the US because it reminds them that they are not alone, although what happened to Hannah was very tragic, her story is incredibly inspiring because it gives hope to many other teens going through the same thing that they aren’t alone in this battle. Although Hannah lost to her depression, it is an important lesson to others that they too, don’t have to take their lives because of depression and bullying. The reasons for conflict to rise in this book is because, her family, friends & boyfriend are dealing with the pain of losing Hannah, when suddenly, these tapes, with Hannah Baker talking on them, start circulating around…but only to selective people who were one of the reasons Hannah killed herself. So, with that being said, whoever got the tapes, knew they were one of the causes to Hannah’s death. It caused anxiety, fear of going to jail, and sadness through the characters, book and projects those feelings to the reader as well. To me, one of the most important quotes in this book is, “I wrote a note to Mrs. Bradley that read: "Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it" (9.201) . I feel this quote is very important because it shows that Hannah tried to reach out to her teacher by writing her a note, but her teacher unfortunately didn’t take the note seriously enough because a week later Hannah was gone. This is an important yet tragic lesson in this book that suicide is something you need to act fast on, if someone is giving a cry out for help, please don’t ignore that cry for help, help them, listen to them, hug them, maybe if her teacher had done that she wouldn’t be gone today. But, like many others, Hannah is now an important story in our history, of how hard it can be to be a teenager. I urge anyone and everyone to read this book and hear Hannah’s story because then maybe we can reduce those 45,000 victims that 2018 will claim, to zero.

My thoughts and feelings on this book are ...All over the place. Leaving me a quivering mess.Shall I explain how a book can do that to you?Just kidding. There is no need to as I am pretty sure that all of you have had the same aftermath from a book at some point in your life. Now getting to the chase.I decided to read this book because of a review that described it as "thought-provoking". It was all I needed. Nothing more, nothing less. Just that adjective. I don't know about you but it has a nice ringing to me.I have always enjoyed reading books that can alter your way of thinking, challenge your reason and morals, make you reflect on things that you hadn't even considered before.So I gave it a shot.And there are many things that I came to love about it and other things for which I am ambivalent. But nothing that I hated.The plot was quite original. Some would even say unrealistic. I mean, the idea of the tapes; impressive."Why not write a letter?" - asked my sister.Because this is a more intimate way, I think. You can perceive the person's emotions better just by the tone of their voice or the pauses that they make. And because writing a letter to all of those who have wronged you in some way is a freaking hassle.To most people, Hannah' s reasons for suicide were obviously not reasons good enough that would lead to suicide in real life. And I agree a little with them on this part. But just a little. It's true that we face things like those everyday. However I don't think that they should be belittled just because they aren't the major causes why people decide to commit suicide nowadays.Every person is different. And so is the way that they think and feel. Something that might not affect you, can have an entirely different effect on another person.The way Hannah felt toward those people's actions, I find it relatable. To not be able to trust people even when the right ones come along, to be terrified of them, pushing them away but also needing someone's help at times. I completely understand it. And I believe that this are the real reasons why she did what she did. I mean the ugliness and cruelty of some people can do that to you."We all have felt like Hannah at some point in our lives, yet here we are" I hear you saying. True, but as I said everyone perceives things differently.I don't think that the reason why this book was written was to promote suicide among those who already feel helpless. Instead I think that the main reason was to promote understanding among those people who may have been Justin, Bryce, Jessica or Tyler at least once in their lives or even to those who have never been. Basically, to make people reflect on their actions.As for the suicide thing, I have always been against it. I do not validate it but even so I know how tempting it is to give up sometimes and how tiring it may be to continue on. And I can't help but feel sorry if that happens because a precious life is wasted.But I don't think that it's right to judge that person as weak even when that happens. Instead we should think of them as a struggling human being, one that did his/her utmost until the end to not give in, regardless of the result. Because you will struggle, a lot both ways.There is another thing that I came to realize after finishing the book. Until now I wasn't sure as to why the author chose to end Hannah's life thinking, but then I thought that perhaps his purpose is to emphasize the importance of our lives."But if he wanted to promote that, J.A wouldn't have ended Hannah's life hence no reasons and hence no book" I hear you say again. And my answer to you all is that we only understand the value of something after it's lost. Forever at times.Would have Clay came to regret all those things and change his way of acting if it weren't for Hannah's suicide?I don't think so.Saying this, I still don't justify it. Just stating an opinion.As for the tapes, most of the reviews that I came across with stated that Hannah was just victimizing herself and blaming the others for her death and that those tapes were unnecessary.But would you think the same way if Hannah wouldn't have send them and you only learned for her reasons through her diary for e.g?I can't help but just wonder.Apart from all of this heavy stuff, I found the author's writing style beautiful. Simply beautiful. Every single word of Hannah's and Clay's narration made me feel something. J.A's choice for intertwining Clay's and Hannah's thought made the book more unique, even if sometimes was hard to follow. And the feelings that came off were bittersweet. Something that I longed to feel from a book.There is no doubt that J. Asher is quite talented and knows his way with words.I am looking forward to his other works.