Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a package with his name on it lying on his porch. Happily he tears into the package only to find that inside are cassette tapes and a letter from Hannah Baker. The girl who he's crushed on since her arrival at his school. The same girl who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On these seven tapes, Hannah explains are the thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life and Clay is one of them. He has to promise to pass the tapes on to the next person in the list but before that he'll have to listen in order to find out how he made the list and just how responsible he was for a girl to feel that she had nowhere left to turn.

Please don't ask me why I've waited to so long to read this book. I think it might have been that I was avoiding the dark subject matter. I'm not entirely sure, but I can tell you that I have had it sitting in my shelves since I purchased it when it first came out.

From the moment that I cracked this book open I could not put it down. I immediately became captivated by the dual narrative of Clay and Hannah. Mr. Asher's storytelling was done in a way where I could easily switch over from Clay's thoughts to Hannah's voice, which you could almost hear - it was that clear, precise, young, sad. I'm not sure if everyone's book came in the same packaging as mine did, but I was able to pull the jacket off my hardcover and by flipping it over I had a copy of the map that Clay was using during the narrative.

I literally became obsessed with this book. I had to know what would cause a young woman to take her life. How a boy like Clay was somehow connected and even one of the reasons that caused the "snowball effect" that led her to end her life so abruptly. I was on an emotional roller coaster - I was going through the up's and down's of Hannah's life, through Clay's anger, frustration, doubt. I found myself wondering at how we can take people for granted, sometimes act or speak without thinking and how these same thoughtless actions can affect another person. It was very thought-provoking, to say the least. Mr. Asher did a phenomenal job of capturing the pressures, challenges and pitfalls today's kids face.

There is no humor in these pages. It is sad and heartbreaking but one that will stay with me for a long time. There aren't words to describe how I feel for this book. All I can say is, if you own it, read it, if you don't, buy it or check out from your library, you will not be disappointed.

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