thirteen reasons why

Clay Jensen returns home to find a strange package with his name on it. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker – his classmate and first love – who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah’s voice explains there are thirteen reasons why she killed herself. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why. All through the night, Clay keeps listening – and what he discovers changes his life forever.

So, the next book on my list was Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. It was one of my Christmas present from my younger sister, and I don’t exactly know why she picked it out for me. Other than the fact that she found it intriguing. It isn’t my “regular” genre. I’m the kind of person that usually read romantic comedies in a novel form. But it’s not like I read whatever chick literature out there, because I’ve read some crap before. Yes, published novels that are well under the “okay” mark, and should probably never have been published. I must sound real mean here. But honestly, I’ve read loads of fan fiction that would be gold compared to those books. And to be completely honest, I wish a lot of those who writes fan fiction could have their work published. Because some of it is actually damn good. And it irks me that I cannot recommend fan fiction the same way as I can recommend novels. Because being published means that someone believes that your work actually will sell. Maybe I’ll just become a book publisher. Anyhow, shall we carry on with the actual review? I liked it, loved it even. And I suppose my sister knew I would. Because, I think mostly everyone would enjoy this book. At the beginning it reminded me of Pretty Little Liars and “A”. Because, well, you get clues and there’s all this mysterious things going on, and you must solve things. And yes. With this book, I barely put it down. And I was adamant to finish it in one day. It’s the kind of book that makes you stop and look at your own life, and just think. It’s a bit of a “think about your actions, because they have consequences” novel. And that’s the main reason why I loved the novel this much. It incorporates basically all the knowledge I’ve learned the last two years or so. “No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same”. I am well aware of the fact that in my actions, I am impacting other people. But yes, you can never know how much. Because the person that is being impacted might not be aware of it themselves. Though Thirteen Reasons Why is in another genre then Looking For Alaska, it turned out to have that same string of thought – your actions will affect others. I’ll add a quote from Looking For Alaska: “There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed OK at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless”. As I mentioned in the review of Looking For Alaska; John Green is a genius with words. I suppose I’m the kind of person that spends a lot of time thinking. And I often think things through in ways other people don’t. I don’t know why to be honest, but I do. And after reading both Thirteen Reasons Why and Looking For Alaska, I cannot help but think of the movie Pay It Forward. I don’t know, but maybe these novels were written for a reason. Maybe it was the authors’ way of doing something to avoid situations that could be avoided. Because the thing is, that one simple action can actually be the deciding factor between life and death. And you might not know it yourself, and if you knew it would lead to something like death, you would obviously avoid it. But you don’t. You don’t always know the consequences of your own actions. But there are consequences. Well, this turned out much longer than intended. I will definitely recommend everyone to give this a read. Because although it’s not the best written book, it definitely carries a good message, and it’s very very exciting along the 288 pages.