Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Thirteen Reasons Why

Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

127 reviews

thepurplepeep's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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vivisms_82's review against another edition

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dark

2.75

I'm in two minds about this book. On one hand it is terrific highlighting how in general you never know what is going through someone's head or what they are experiencing in private, so to perhaps treat each other better, listen better, check in with each other better. On the other hand I found Hannah

arriving at such a final, serious decision seemed kinda flippant and not believable. Her tapes were predominately on blaming others but didn't explicitly reflect how others actions made her feel to the extent where life wasn't worth living. Just sounded finger pointing and being pissed off but where was the emotion? Where was the despair of what she was going through? Her voice is clear, not shakey, definitely not depressed or melancholic (like you'd expect someone with suicidal ideation to be presenting). Suicide being the end result just doesn't make sense. But maybe that was the author's point - Hannah's suicide is not supposed to make sense. I don't know but either way, considering this is YA and most of the target readers will be YA, I think the author missed an amazing opportunity to do better. Because after reading this book, it seems to glamorise suicide and insult the resilience and tenacity of teens and that instead they can just throw in the towel when things are unpleasant - because that is what most of her grievances are - unpleasant experiences. Hannah makes suicide feel like an easy, reasonable solution when in my experience no one has arrived at that decision so casually. I am curious how much research (if any at all) the author did about teenage mental health and suicide. I read that he based this on a close relative's attempted suicide and wanted the focus to be on how we treat people and not on mental health. But writing a book where the content is as serious as a 17 year old taking their life and purposely not exploring the shaken state of their mental health from said bad treatment, feels lazy and incomplete. Exploring this would have given insight and perspective and maybe made me more sympathetic to Hannah.

Other issues I had were the major gaps of guilt between characters that featured on the tapes (Someone saying you have a hot ass has the same weight as being a rape bystander apparently. Oh and she was a rape bystander too but apparently she is off the hook but Justin isn't). And why the flip Hannah doesn't feel Bryce should get his comeuppance is beyond me! You're dead Hannah so why do you care? She wanted the tapes to be passed along which is fine but how about sending a tape solely about Bryce to the cops?? He should go to prison so he doesn't rape another girl ever, ever again. Talk about misdirected anger and blame Hannah! That truly pissed me off. Also, Hannah's lack of sympathy or concern for Jessica was bothersome for me. She has time to make the tapes but did she ever stop and think maybe Jessica might need some support too? And she doesn't even think about the impact of divulging Jessica's rape to all these people will have on Jessica. She may or mayn't remember what happened but now, at least 13 people know about her assault. Just awful.

The highlight for me was at the end when Clay sees Skye and goes to check in with her (well we assume he is). I'm hoping Jessica is next on his list to chat with.

** In case you are wondering why I scored such a flawed book more than a 1/5, it is because I feel like this book at least creates dialogue about suicide in teens and for that alone I think it is not so bad.

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