Thrilling debut about suicide

304 Pages List price $16.99

Covering a topic most fictional authors avoid, “13 Reasons Why” begins with a simple high school senior Clay Jenkins. After coming home one day he finds a simple package has been delivered to him that is full of archaic cassette tapes with no note and no return address.

These tapes proceed to ruin the rest of his day and change his life. After popping the tapes into an old tape player that Clay found in his garage, he hears to his delight, and to his horror, the voice of Hannah Baker, his crush and fling who committed suicide the week before.

Clay and the rest of his class acknowledged Hannahs’ death, but they would not talk about it, rather they noticed the empty desk in the middle of the classroom with a quiet reverence.

The seven tapes Clay receives are dedicated to 12 people who gave her 13 reasons to end her life by swallowing a mouthful of pills.

Hannah and Clay’s story is told in a dual narrative format in which the voice on the tapes interjects Clays thoughts.

The novel is a story of life altering change that you think about for days, if not years after you have finished the book. A short novel at 300 pages, it can easily be finished on a Sunday afternoon without any trouble.

The people who Asher portrays seem normal on the outside, but in reality they each have their own dirty secret, with some being darker than others. Without giving too much of the plot away, the secrets range from ignorance to abusive boyfriends.

This novel is more than a story, it is a message. Some of the reasons Hannah ends her life is because of trivial nonsense such as gossip. It honestly makes the reader think about what they have said over the last few days to see if they might have hurt someone in this way.

The people, the plot, and the reactions that Asher writes about are so believable at some points you have to remember that the book is a novel and not a non-fiction work.

A type of intense love story, “13 Reasons Why” should be added to anyone’s list of books to read before they die.

Although the book is not as groundbreaking as author Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” or as epic as Homer’s “The Odyssey,” it is a fervent story everyone should read before the end of their life. The novel goes to show how everything eventually adds up, even the smallest actions, to create a “snowball effect” that eventually caused Hannah to give up on life.

If you are a fan of the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer and already have finished her latest novel “Breaking Dawn”, this book is a perfect fit for your tastes. Also fans of the Lindsey Lohan Movie Mean Girls, 13 Reasons Why runs along the same, intense teen lines.