A review by heather01602to60660
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

4.0

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to rate and review this book. It's interesting I'm reading it within a month of Lauren Oliver's "Before I Fall" - both touch on a similar theme of how realizing your actions affect someone else, especially when they are at their most vulnerable. Both left me rushing to finish, compelled to know how it would turn out. Where they really diverged, though, was the ending. "Before I Fall" was a gut punch, but left me satisfied. "Thirteen Reasons Why" probably was meant to feel uplifting, but all I could envision was the end of the movie "Heathers" - but that was a black comedy and it fit; here it felt too neatly tied up, coming full circle, and yet left me frustrated not to hear the rest of the story of the passage of the tapes. I wanted to know how Clay would react as others listened; as he had to deal with those whose secrets he'd already heard.

Despite some glaring issues for me (I don't want to go into too many details because they each give away bits of the story that Asher does an excellent job keeping suspenseful), I found the unique method of story telling and the suspense itself made it an enjoyable read.