Thirteen Reasons Why

Categories: Teen Books

After a classmate's recent suicide, Clay Jensen comes home to find a package on his porch, with no return address. It contains cassette tapes with Hannah Baker's voice on them, explaining why she killed herself. Each of the thirteen stories on the cassettes belongs to a person who played a crucial role in Hannah's suicide.

The kicker is that everyone who receives the tapes is one of the reasons she killed herself. So what did Clay Jenkins, who loved Hannah, do to be on the receiving end of all that guilt?

Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, brings together this tale of grief, love, and surviving high school, in a story of both compassion and blameful vengeance.

Asher alternates between Hannah's narration of her path toward suicide and Clay's reaction to her point of view. We see Clay remember certain moments he hadn't understood until now, and we watch him revisit places and parties Hannah describes. And we see him meet some of the other members of those thirteen fateful stories.

While the biggest suspense factor in Thirteen Reasons Why is the question, "What did Clay do?", this story will make you think about how you treat others and what happens when you look the other way.

I won't ruin it for you by telling you why Clay belongs in the thirteen.