Book Review: 13 Reasons Why

Since I mentioned it in my post about books I was reading, I figured I'd tell you what it was about now.

(Spoiler Warning!!!)

13 Reasons Why looked good on the review I read. The basic plot is that a teen boy comes home from school one day & finds a package on his doorstep addressed to him. He opens it & finds a bunch of cassette tapes labeled 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. Not knowing what they are about or who they're from (no return address), he goes out to the garage to find his dad's old tape player & puts in the first tape. Immediately he recognizes the voice of Hannah Baker, a girl he's had a crush on for years....a girl who committed suicide 2 weeks ago. She recorded all these tapes before she killed herself & they're being circulated around to 13 specific people. Each one of them is named on the tapes, primarily for her to explain how they affected her life, what caused her to come to the conclusion that suicide was the best choice and how they were to blame.

Now, that (above) is what all the reviews said about the book. But the truth is, I was drawn into the book for the first umpteen chapters & really wanted to see how it ended, why Clay Jensen (the boy who found the tapes) was named on the tapes...what he did to contribute to Hannah's life. But by the time I reached the 200th+ page of word for word dialogue from the tapes, I got bored. I am by no means discounting teen depression and suicide rates. Please don't misunderstand that. I am absolutely aware that perception of your problems is all that matters and if you perceive them as HUGE, no one else's argument could convince you otherwise. And obviously teens who commit suicide are dealing with some very serious perceptions of things going on in their lives.

But really, the teenager drivel and 50 page explanations of why this teen girl or why that teen boy hurt Hannah's feelings got really annoying and boring. Maybe that makes me shallow or uncaring, but folks....I'm not a high school counselor & this is a FICTION novel, so it's not as if I'm blowing off a real person who's got serious issues.

Today, I skipped ahead & read the last chapter to see how Clay fit into all of Hannah's tapes and then I turned around and listed the book on half.com! I'm done. And what frustrated me more than the whole book of long drug out griping about Hannah's life is the fact that half.com had it marked as a book for kids, grades 7-9. Holy moly. Sure, give a 9th grader who is pubescent & feeling self conscious a book about a whiney teen girl who decides that suicide is the best way to deal with all that. And ya know, in the end of the book, Hannah describes a pretty sexual situation she lived through that I wouldn't really want my 8th grader reading about! So no thanks half.com....the 7th-9th grader at this house won't be reading this book! yikes!

Would I recommend this book? No.
Out of 5 stars, I give it about a 2 for the first 175-ish pages' worth of gripping content. Beyond that, it's just long & drug out & will make you want to scream at the suicidal girl.

Please understand, I have great sympathy for families who've lived through a family member's suicide. I understand that there are plenty of teens who commit suicide for "trivial" things & there is probably great truth in some of this book, however the book didn't present it in a way to keep me hooked. It just seemed like chapter after chapter of Hannah fussing about the same sort of thing over & over.