"Thirteen Reasons Why" : A Book Review

Book Review on Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher; a #1 New York Times and an International Bestseller.

Book Title: Thirteen Reasons Why

Author: Jay Asher

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Razorbill

Publication Date: 18 October 2007

ISBN: 978-1-59514-171-2 (hardcover); 978-1-59514-188-0 (paperback)

Reviewer: Melzar Jan Chico of STEM 11 Mendel

*****

You can't stop the future

You can't rewind the past

The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play

- Jay Asher

Jay Asher's bestselling novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, was critically acclaimed and criticized due to Asher's utilization of a bold, daunting themes of guilt and death, emphasis especially on self-harm and suicide. Since its Netflix-adapted web television series gained lots of praises and popularity, the book as well gained popularity and was sought by avid readers who watched the web series first. The 2007, young adult novel narrates the story of a teenage boy receiving a box containing several cassette tapes, only to be correlated to a suicide case of his former schoolmate.  Asher roots the idea of the novel from a close relative of his, attempting suicide on her junior years in high school, thus plainly giving us the main idea of the novel. The book's prevalent mood was melancholic and monotonous, giving it an oozing increments of sadness, full of protagonist's pessimism, the anxious Clay Jensen, and his classmate, crush, and the suicide victim Hannah Baker. This review is intended to analyze the points of the novel subjectively, derive and evaluate a conclusion based on the writer's perspective, opinion, and taste.

The novel commenced when Clay Jensen returns home after school, only to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers seven cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker – his classmate and crush – who committed suicide two weeks before. Hannah’s voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life and Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why. He started to listen the tapes and spends the night crisscrossing on his town, Crestmont. He becomes a firsthand witness of Hannah and discovers the experiences that Hannah gone through. As he follows Hannah's recorded voice throughout the town, what he discovers changes his life forever.

Thirteen Reasons Why had its strong and weak points, and each must be taken into consideration in order to evaluate the novel. The main strength of the novel is that it is realistic in the current times, especially the millennials, specifically the teenagers where teenage conflicts are inevitable like bullying, peer pressure, changes in different aspects and the like. Another strength is that it is easily understandable by literate readers, does not use highfalutin words, and cohesion and coherence. The plot, the general idea, and how the novel relay to its readers are also impressive and splendid, thus considering it as a strong point as well. However, the main weakness of the book , from my perspective, is that the book tackles about the sensitive subject of suicide, and the readers who misunderstood the novel's message of "Suicide's not the answer" might commit self-harm rather than the opposite, thus the book being an ignition of a tragedy . Another weakness is the bad attempt of the author to set emotions from different for different characters, especially Hannah and Clay's emotions. Considered a weakness to is the absence of logic and common sense in the characters of the novel, even though the settings and issues of the novel were realistic, the character's logical thinking were poor, rendering unrealistic, nonrelatable characters.

Thirteen Reasons Why is a book with lots of redeeming qualities of being a must-read for certain readers, especially the millennials, focusing on the teenagers. Being a teenagers is tough, facing challenges of fitting in, encounter bullies and mean groups of people, engagement of good and bad things out of peer pressure, the domineering and lowering self-esteems from variety of teens, and more. Kudos to Thirteen Reasons Why for greatly portraying the prevalent issue, where any teenager can really relate into this novel, thus making it must read to them. Other from that, the book is actually easy to understand and it never uses any highfalutin words. Since the book is easily understood by any reader, it is also understood that the sentence organization of the novel was also excellent, from sentence unity, cohesion and coherence. In my perspective, the general idea of the story was awesome. Enhanced suicide notes out from an audio tape? That's amazing! Kudos to the author too, Jay Asher to this wonderful idea. Another thing that I really like in this novel is how the author used text conventions in order to identify which is Hannah's recording and which is Clay's. Basically, the usage of italicization and such really helped the readers understand the novel even more! The plot was okay and there were plot twists that can took me in the edge of my seat. All in all, the novel had strong points that made the novel engaging.

Suicide is a prevalent theme in the novel, and obviously, that is not good for individuals that might misunderstood the message of the story. To make this even worse, the book is catering to teenagers and young adult, and it is a known truth that teenagers are more vulnerable to suicidal thoughts due to self-esteem from his or her peers. This is going to be a weakness of the novel, even one school library in the United States of America even banned this book for safety reasons. Thirteen Reasons Why is a book that glamorizes suicide, and that is really not good, so better safe than sorry and never recommend this to a friend that might be suicidal in mind. Emotions are also a problem in the book. As a reader, I can't really pinpoint on what does the protagonist or Hannah really feels, are they sad? confused? happy? anything? This is happening since the author made the atmosphere too bland and melancholic, thus the time you read the book, you vividly imagine the characters emotionless in a monochrome setting. Even though this setting is good for other melancholic novels, this setting or atmosphere is inappropriate for what Asher is trying to pull of on his novel. Lastly, logic and common sense were very lacking on the characters. If one reader might say "If Clay wants to know which tape is he found, he could just play the cassette tapes one by one, until he found his and skip the rest of the tapes." or "Hannah could have said goodbye to her parents through the tapes rather than giving them to the persons that were one of the reasons". The author could have made some restrictions and limitations on the things and gave out reasons why this is not possible and such. Logic and common sense is really important for a fictional character, in order to be relatable and realistic. All in all, the novel also had weak points that could hinder someone from reading this book.

To conclude this review, the book was very mesmerizing and it actually had a moral that I learned: help one another especially the one who needs it. The book was not common nor any predictable like other novels, I mean would you consider the audio recorded suicide note as a common, cliche, too general type of novel? No, right? That premised made the book float out of the mainstream and be unique. Thirteen Reasons Why had strong and weak points, and both forces are very strong and I have mixed thoughts whether I should recommend the book or not. Probably, what I can do here is that I only recommend this book to the persons who are capable of thinking and is beyond the legal age, which is 18 years old and above. The author's writing were fine, the general idea and plot were excellent, although he failed from setting emotions of the each characters and failed in establishing the atmosphere of some scenes in the novel. The book has a less replay value, due to that readers only wants to know in which tape Clay is found or to find out who's in the 13th tape. Overall the book was good and I actually enjoyed it, although some scenes were really messy and hard to understand, it was one of the good books I have read.

MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐ out of 5. Not so bad, and not so good either.

*****