Mini review: Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why is a YA novel written by Jay Asher.

It's the story of Clay Jensen, whose life changes when he receives a package with no return address. On opening it, he finds out its contents; tapes that need to be passed on to 13 persons, recorded by his crush.

Hannah Baker, who weeks ago had committed suicide.

Those seven tapes --thirteen sides-- are a narrative description of what brought her to that point of no return.

But Clay can't understand why he's one of the recipients. What did he do for her to blame him as well?

As the story unfolds, the readers will be in for quite some surprising and unforseen events.


Thirteen Reasons Why is an interesting book. It was well written, with some very shocking plot twists. But did all that make me like it? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Maybe that's because I couldn't really understand Hannah.

I found myself hating her by the end of the book. It's like she was whining during the whole thing and well, I found some of her 'reasons' to be quite petty. Also, I think that what she did was really selfish. Suicide is already something very difficult to deal with. Now, by sending those tapes, she only makes it harder for some persons who were perhaps already blaming themselves. See how selfish she is?

On the other hand, I rather liked Clay's character. He's tormented when he receives the tapes, and can't help himself from feeling guilty. Poor him...

In any case, Thirteen Reasons Why was an okay read. Though I disliked Hannah, I couldn't stop myself from reading it because I really wanted to know about what brought her to that point. So yeah, I'd recommend it, because it was gripping and gives an insight on suicide...

Score: 3.5/5