Plot
Clay Jensen, a high school student, comes home one afternoon and finds a package sitting at his door. Upon opening it, he finds it is a shoebox filled with 13 cassette tapes recorded by Hannah, a girl at his school who has recently committed suicide. The tapes were being mailed to one classmate and once they finished listening, they were to mail the tapes to the next classmate on the list. Hannah has a second set of tapes with someone else, who will leak the tapes to the entire school if a person does not pass them on.
Clay listens to the tapes in which Hannah details all of her pain and suffering and where her life has went wrong, and how this relates to the person who has been given the tapes. Each person who has been given the tapes has supposedly played a role in Hannah's destruction and by giving them the tapes, it is Hannah's last way to tell her story.
My Thoughts
Here are 13 reasons why this book is truly not as wonderful and gripping as everybody seems to think it is:
1. We are not given any hint that Hannah did not pop out of the ground fully grown, because Hannah's parents are never shown. At least, Hannah's relationship with her parents is never shown. While this is a trope commonly present in YA fiction, she doesn't even remotely seem to think of them or what her actions will do to them before she commits suicide.
2. Clay doesn't really have much of a personality. You can tell he is just a vehicle for us (the audience) to listen to these tapes. He doesn't have any character.
3. I couldn't connect the dots. I don't get how Hannah got from point A to point B. I thought it would all come together in the end and make sense, but it didn't. It was only a loose string of events that Hannah was desperately trying to string together.
4. The suspense is non-existent. I didn't have a burning need to get to the end, which is what the author is going for.
5. None of the people on the list seem to get much retribution for their actions--even the ones who actually committed crimes.
6. This isn't a realistic portrayal of depression and suicidal thoughts. Hannah says she's only depressed because people were mean to her, while in reality, even situational depression is a legitimate mental health issue.
7. In relation to the number above, this book wasn't researched properly. I don't think he took the time to get different portrayals of depression and suicide victims and truly get all sides of the story. Asher just took every broken bird trope he could find and applied it to Hannah.
8. I couldn't connect to Hannah--she was made out to be a sympathetic character, but was actually aggravating.
9. Most of the main characters were flat and unemotional. Specifically, many of the female characters weren't fleshed out. While the male characters were sort of deep (the story is narrated by Clay, a responsible, straight-laced yet sensitive guy), no one in this book was given much of a personality, and the female characters fared the worst. I can't even remember any female characters' names apart from Hannah.
11. There were plot holes. Specifically, the parts in the coffee shop were vague and unconnected to the total plot.
12. Hannah has scarred the lives of 13 teenagers as "revenge". She foists incredible amounts of guilt onto these people and I doubt they will be getting over this soon; most of them feel miserable and guilty. They will forever regret being the cause of death for a sensitive teenage girl.
13. Remember when I said I had thirteen reasons for why I hated this book?
I lied.
This last point is going to be about what this book could have accomplished, in the hands of a more skilled author. The theme of this book was that words and actions, which may seem small and inconsequential, can ruin a person's life. Hannah was slut-shamed into despair. All it took was one lie about her doing something with one guy and it spiraled into Hannah being turned into the school's resident "ho". This is something that plagues girls and women everywhere. We are not allowed to be sexually free beings. Not only that, but if there's even word of us being sexually free beings, we are shamed to no end. There's always a fear there.
I can see what Jay Asher was trying to do. He had an essentially good premise, but it didn't work. He jsut seemed to have a fundamental misunderstanding of depression and suicide, and other mental health-related issues. Hannah had the potential to be a strong vehicle for a stand against slut-shaming and how it goes and in hand with the bullying many teen girls face. A few kids talked about Hannah and called her a mean name, and it ended her world. That isn't believable. She accuses people of not seeing or understanding her, yet doesn't even try to get people to help before deciding they don't care. She plays the victim throughout the novel while doing some of the exact same things she accuses others of. Hannah doesn't realize that she is the one who took those pills. She is the one who chose to end it all. She never puts the blame on herself, instead handing it off to everybody else. Asher, instead of placing the blame on the system that made Hannah's suicide possible, places it on random characters in order to make Hannah more sympathetic. Thirteen Reasons Why is full of wasted potential.
-Lynette
Clay listens to the tapes in which Hannah details all of her pain and suffering and where her life has went wrong, and how this relates to the person who has been given the tapes. Each person who has been given the tapes has supposedly played a role in Hannah's destruction and by giving them the tapes, it is Hannah's last way to tell her story.
My Thoughts
Here are 13 reasons why this book is truly not as wonderful and gripping as everybody seems to think it is:
1. We are not given any hint that Hannah did not pop out of the ground fully grown, because Hannah's parents are never shown. At least, Hannah's relationship with her parents is never shown. While this is a trope commonly present in YA fiction, she doesn't even remotely seem to think of them or what her actions will do to them before she commits suicide.
2. Clay doesn't really have much of a personality. You can tell he is just a vehicle for us (the audience) to listen to these tapes. He doesn't have any character.
3. I couldn't connect the dots. I don't get how Hannah got from point A to point B. I thought it would all come together in the end and make sense, but it didn't. It was only a loose string of events that Hannah was desperately trying to string together.
4. The suspense is non-existent. I didn't have a burning need to get to the end, which is what the author is going for.
5. None of the people on the list seem to get much retribution for their actions--even the ones who actually committed crimes.
6. This isn't a realistic portrayal of depression and suicidal thoughts. Hannah says she's only depressed because people were mean to her, while in reality, even situational depression is a legitimate mental health issue.
7. In relation to the number above, this book wasn't researched properly. I don't think he took the time to get different portrayals of depression and suicide victims and truly get all sides of the story. Asher just took every broken bird trope he could find and applied it to Hannah.
8. I couldn't connect to Hannah--she was made out to be a sympathetic character, but was actually aggravating.
9. Most of the main characters were flat and unemotional. Specifically, many of the female characters weren't fleshed out. While the male characters were sort of deep (the story is narrated by Clay, a responsible, straight-laced yet sensitive guy), no one in this book was given much of a personality, and the female characters fared the worst. I can't even remember any female characters' names apart from Hannah.
11. There were plot holes. Specifically, the parts in the coffee shop were vague and unconnected to the total plot.
12. Hannah has scarred the lives of 13 teenagers as "revenge". She foists incredible amounts of guilt onto these people and I doubt they will be getting over this soon; most of them feel miserable and guilty. They will forever regret being the cause of death for a sensitive teenage girl.
13. Remember when I said I had thirteen reasons for why I hated this book?
I lied.
This last point is going to be about what this book could have accomplished, in the hands of a more skilled author. The theme of this book was that words and actions, which may seem small and inconsequential, can ruin a person's life. Hannah was slut-shamed into despair. All it took was one lie about her doing something with one guy and it spiraled into Hannah being turned into the school's resident "ho". This is something that plagues girls and women everywhere. We are not allowed to be sexually free beings. Not only that, but if there's even word of us being sexually free beings, we are shamed to no end. There's always a fear there.
I can see what Jay Asher was trying to do. He had an essentially good premise, but it didn't work. He jsut seemed to have a fundamental misunderstanding of depression and suicide, and other mental health-related issues. Hannah had the potential to be a strong vehicle for a stand against slut-shaming and how it goes and in hand with the bullying many teen girls face. A few kids talked about Hannah and called her a mean name, and it ended her world. That isn't believable. She accuses people of not seeing or understanding her, yet doesn't even try to get people to help before deciding they don't care. She plays the victim throughout the novel while doing some of the exact same things she accuses others of. Hannah doesn't realize that she is the one who took those pills. She is the one who chose to end it all. She never puts the blame on herself, instead handing it off to everybody else. Asher, instead of placing the blame on the system that made Hannah's suicide possible, places it on random characters in order to make Hannah more sympathetic. Thirteen Reasons Why is full of wasted potential.
-Lynette
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