Thirteen Reasons Why

Hannah killed herself, and now there are tapes circulating around to thirteen different people, detailing how each of them is a reason she killed herself. Clay gets them, and what he hears changes his life.

Hannah lays quite a bit of the blame for committing suicide on other people. If they had just listened, just not mocked her, just been better, she wouldn't have killed herself. Does she really realize what kind of life long effect this will have on these kids??? A girl is raped. Basically, this book is really depressing (maybe she wants people to join her in suicide).

Clay is just a really pretty nice guy. And he takes this whole tape thing pretty well, considering how he could have. I guess.

I found this whole book to be disturbing. We've got a decent guy, who really likes this girl, then the girl kills herself, then the boy gets tapes on which the dead girl tells thirteen people that they caused her suicide. Maybe she mentions once that there was more to her suicide than these people, but you really come away thinking that if only these people had been better people, she wouldn't have killed herself. This simply isn't the case. Hannah was struggling with MAJOR depression, and having a good friend won't cure that, and it's wrong to imply that, because it puts an unbelievable amount of stress on depressed people's friends. This made me really angry, because I know what it is like to be friends with a depressed person, and I (or anybody else who knows a depressed person) can't take responsibility for their feelings. If they are clinically depressed, they have a mental illness (as horrible as that sounds) and should be in therapy/on drugs. It's not their fault they're depressed, it isn't mine either, it's an illness that needs treatment. Hannah shouldn't have made those tapes laying the blame on her acquaintances' door.