Author: Jay Asher | Page Count: 288
The premise of Thirteen Reasons Why is an interesting one. A girl, Hannah, who recently committed suicide left behind a series of cassette tapes in which she explains the various events that led to her suicide. I feel like Jay Asher had some big message he wanted to send here- there's no concrete reason why people kill themselves, small actions can have a huge effect on others- but he completely misses the art. Hannah is surprisingly unsympathetic, and seems more interested in dragging others down with her than anything else. Most of the things she tears apart others for are minor- voting her "Best Ass", touching her leg on a date- but some of her own actions are pretty sickening.
We experience the tapes via Gary Stu extraordinaire Clay Jensen, and it's him that takes this book from "not very good" to "nearly unreadable". He constantly interrupts Hannah's stories with the most inane interjections, like "wow this milkshake tastes really good" and "that class is really fun" and keeps the story from ever having any sort of flow. The book needed a likable character somewhere, I guess, but Clay's so devoid of flaws that it's irritating, and I can't like anyone who has to interject every 5 minutes to let me know that Hannah was pretty.
1 reason why I need to read better books out of 5
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