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A review by melodyonline
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
2.0
Where to begin? This is a terrible story. Listening to this audiobook, I had a lot of mixed feelings. The voice actors were spot on. The story is really unique and suspenseful. So I had to give it 3 stars just for drawing me in and keeping me intrigued enough to keep listening - even when our 2 main characters were getting on my nerves. I took away 1 because the plot of this story is rubbing me the wrong way.
Realistically, it doesn't make sense. Hannah's motivations, her reasons (I'd say only about 3 people on her list actually deserved the vitriol she serves from beyond the grave), the conclusions she comes to. I can't minimize the bullying, borderline sexual assault, isolation, stalking, and other awful things Hannah puts up with in his book. That's tough. That's enough to make you want to give up. But Hannah is not mentally ill. She's having a hard time with high school bullies and boys. That's it. She takes almost no responsibility for her own actions.
How can you blame 13 other people for not saving your life when you never directly asked any of those 13 people for help? How can you be mad when no one comes to your aid after assuming they should know by osmosis that you're in trouble?
I'm not slut shaming her or implying that she should have been more 'pure' or whatever if she wanted to be treated better by the boys in school, I'm simply saying that while her life was spinning out of control she could have done more to help herself. Hannah frames herself as the victim in her own story, which isn't shocking. It is frustrating to see how passive and self-absorbed all the people in Hannah's life were (Clay being #1). But THEY'RE TEENAGERS. Hannah was just as self-absorbed as all the people she blames for not saving her life.
Like I said before this is a terrible story. Especially when you think about who the target audience is: teenagers. This is a YA book in which a girl commits suicide and then proceeds to blame it on 13 different people. Nothing more, nothing less even though the author tries to make it more profound than that. "Because of the brutal life lesson these students learned from their classmate's suicide, now they know to do better next time". I'm being facetious, but not really. Asher and his character Hannah puts the onus on other people to save suicidal teens. Jay Asher has written an EXTREMELY problematic issue book that reduces every character in the story into a selfish villain for being typical teenagers focused more on their own lives than the life of the rumored 'slutty girl'.
This book really does glamorize death too. It was weird to sit and listen to this girl turn the story of her suicide into some kind of sick adventure that her classmates should participate in. It's like awesome, Hannah. Way to go for scaring these people for life for not knowing everything you were going through. How sick is it to sit down and write a whole book about this?? This is a serious issue that gets completely watered down by Hannah Baker's combined quest and sob story. How trivializing to the thousands of young people who take their own lives every year in this country!
I think the other characters didn't pick up on the fact that she was suicidal because the suicidal tendencies seemingly come from out of nowhere. Hannah's irrational behavior is simply a nice embellishment to add to the sad, adventure story of Hannah's life (which again, is not representative of any real mental illness). When it comes to mental health, the girl this book revolves around was not portrayed realistically enough for the 'fun' that the author builds around her. That's my problem with this.
Realistically, it doesn't make sense. Hannah's motivations, her reasons (I'd say only about 3 people on her list actually deserved the vitriol she serves from beyond the grave), the conclusions she comes to. I can't minimize the bullying, borderline sexual assault, isolation, stalking, and other awful things Hannah puts up with in his book. That's tough. That's enough to make you want to give up. But Hannah is not mentally ill. She's having a hard time with high school bullies and boys. That's it. She takes almost no responsibility for her own actions.
How can you blame 13 other people for not saving your life when you never directly asked any of those 13 people for help? How can you be mad when no one comes to your aid after assuming they should know by osmosis that you're in trouble?
I'm not slut shaming her or implying that she should have been more 'pure' or whatever if she wanted to be treated better by the boys in school, I'm simply saying that while her life was spinning out of control she could have done more to help herself. Hannah frames herself as the victim in her own story, which isn't shocking. It is frustrating to see how passive and self-absorbed all the people in Hannah's life were (Clay being #1). But THEY'RE TEENAGERS. Hannah was just as self-absorbed as all the people she blames for not saving her life.
Like I said before this is a terrible story. Especially when you think about who the target audience is: teenagers. This is a YA book in which a girl commits suicide and then proceeds to blame it on 13 different people. Nothing more, nothing less even though the author tries to make it more profound than that. "Because of the brutal life lesson these students learned from their classmate's suicide, now they know to do better next time". I'm being facetious, but not really. Asher and his character Hannah puts the onus on other people to save suicidal teens. Jay Asher has written an EXTREMELY problematic issue book that reduces every character in the story into a selfish villain for being typical teenagers focused more on their own lives than the life of the rumored 'slutty girl'.
This book really does glamorize death too. It was weird to sit and listen to this girl turn the story of her suicide into some kind of sick adventure that her classmates should participate in. It's like awesome, Hannah. Way to go for scaring these people for life for not knowing everything you were going through. How sick is it to sit down and write a whole book about this?? This is a serious issue that gets completely watered down by Hannah Baker's combined quest and sob story. How trivializing to the thousands of young people who take their own lives every year in this country!
I think the other characters didn't pick up on the fact that she was suicidal because the suicidal tendencies seemingly come from out of nowhere. Hannah's irrational behavior is simply a nice embellishment to add to the sad, adventure story of Hannah's life (which again, is not representative of any real mental illness). When it comes to mental health, the girl this book revolves around was not portrayed realistically enough for the 'fun' that the author builds around her. That's my problem with this.