Overview

"I hope you are ready, because I'm about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended." From the beginning of the book, the plot was mixed with mystery and depression. Thirteen Reasons Why  described a deep disturbing tale of a high school girl named Hannah Baker who decided to end her life. But before she killed herself, Hannah sent out thirteen tapes, telling her story, to a list of people who made her want to kill herself. Once a person got the tapes, they would listen to all thirteen stories, then send the collection of recording to the next person on the tapes. That's what happened to Clay Jensen one day when he found the package of tapes at his front door. To understand where he fits into Hannah's reason, Clay must sit through and listen to the tapes and wait for his story.

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Book Cover for Thirteen Reasons Why

Plot

Right off from the first page, the book Thirteen Reasons Why made you itch to find out Hannah Baker's story and where the narrator, Clay Jensen, fell into her list of reasons. The plot was quick moving at first, jumping right into the cassette tape and the rising action. After that, however, the plot slowed down. The book dragged on the stories of the other kids who received the tapes before Clay, making you want to read the book even faster to get to the climax. Unfortunately, I found the book rather depressing at some times, making me want to put the book down because it put me in a gloomy mood. If the book wasn't so unnerving, I probably would have wanted to read it faster, that's where I thought the author went wrong with this book. In the rising action part of the novel, he stressed the dark mood too much that it made the readers unwilling to read on. On the other hand, once I had gotten to the climax of the story, when the tape's story is of Clay, I could not tear my eyes away from reading it. The plot from then was fast paced like it was at the beginning of the book and the mood was light enough that I could read it without feeling too blue, making it impossible to put down. The plot was also well thought out, I could tell the author knew the direction the book was meant to go at the very beginning. He connected the stories I had read in the first fifty pages of the book with the last twenty pages and they fit together nicely, almost like a puzzle. Overall, the plot was thrilling and planned out, but drew out the morbid parts too much for my enjoyment.

Characters

The characters of the book Thirteen Reasons Why were well developed except for, in my opinion, Hannah Baker. I thought that the author put too much emphasis on the stereotypical teenage angst girl who thinks the whole world is out to get her and destroy her life. In addition to that, nearing the end of the book, she practically gives up with trying to live and make her life happy. Hannah purposely walks into situations which she knows will emotionally hurt her and push her into suicide even more. Another personality flaw in Hannah Baker was her excessive use of sarcasm in serious plot moments. For example, when Clay first tarted listening to the tapes, Hannah said "Now, why would a dead girl lie? Hey! That sounds like some kind of joke. Why would a dead girl lie? Answer: Because she can't stand up." Lines like that in the book, make Hannah Baker sound sick, twisted, and morbid. That may be the intent of the author, but during the book, I was supposed to feel pity for Hannah Baker, but when she says lines like that, it makes me want to detest her personality.

The other characters, like Clay Jensen, were more enjoyable than Hannah. Clay Jensen made you feel pity for him and understand his feelings during the whole story. He was more open and less dark minded than Hannah was, and could tell why Hannah was doing things to herself when she was talking on the tapes, opposed to the reasons she had stated herself. Like in the scene when she was going to a party which she knew there were people there that would harm her, she said on the tapes that the reason she was going was because she was forgiving and open minded. While listening to this, Clay said "You knew it was the worst choice possible. You knew that. That's why you did it. You wanted your world to collapse around you." Clay was very deep and understood other people's feelings. especially Hannah's feelings. That's why you had to like him as a main character

. 

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Setting

Setting in this book was a bit confusing at times. The author described the area where Clay Jensen visited quite well and I could see the location he was talking about in my head, but without the map of the town in the front of the book, I would have been confused about the streets and turns Clay was taking during the story. It was also hard to follow where Hannah Baker was recording or talking about in the the tapes, since there were two different settings that would occur on the same page. For example, Hannah would be talking about a house that she went to for a party, while Clay was sitting in a cafe that Hannah had visited earlier in the story. The clashing of locations between Clay and
Hannah was honestly hard to keep up with.

The time, however, was very well planned and interesting. It was intriguing to see how the different times of the stories fit together at the end of the book. The timeline of the setting was the best part of the whole story. I liked how people she had encountered earlier in the story had came back in the end and added a purpose in the story.

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Map of the town in Thirteen Reasons Why

Point of View

In Thirteen Reasons Why, the point of view was very different and interesting. The main point of view was first person of Clay Jensen. During the story, I knew what he was feeling, what he was seeing, and what he was saying. But, the other point of view was the first person of Hannah Baker, through the tapes. I also understood what she was feeling, seeing, and saying. It was also amusing when Hannah would talk through the tapes and say something to the listener, telling them something that they were just thinking about in their head. It was like Hannah could read Clay's mind and answer his questions from a recording. This was a very unique and fun point of view, knowing the events and feelings of more than one person in the book, while still using the 'I' pronoun. As far as point of view, this is one of the most interesting novels I've read.

Themes

Thirteen Reasons Why is basically a book themed around bullying, suicide, and rumors. The book's theme can be interpreted in many ways. One theme that I came up with is "Little things can pile up." This theme can be seen from the way that Hannah Baker decided to kill herself because of thirteen different people, different reasons, not just  one person, or one reason. She committed suicide because of the actions of thirteen people, but if it would have been just one or two, she would have been still alive.

Another theme that can found in the book is "Sometimes  the best thing to do is to let things go", which is kind of the opposite of the last theme. Even though Hannah's small reasons piled up and it was depressing for her, maybe the best thing for her to do was to let them all go, or not hold on to them so much.  She wouldn't have committed suicide if she had learned to forgive at forget the first people of the tapes.After a while, at the end of the tapes, Hannah practically dragged herself into bad situations because she felt like life wasn't worth living anymore because of the first five or six people. The last couple tapes were not the other person's fault anymore than it was of Hannah's fault for giving up. If she learned how to forget the events in the beginning tapes, she wouldn't have fallen into the situations later in the novel.

The bullying and rumors can also be transformed into a theme like "Don't start rumors because you don't know how much they will damage others." Most of the reasons why people are on the tape is because they had started a rumor about Hannah Baker or had talked about her in some way. This, I believe, was supposed to be the whole idea of the book, where a downward spiral of Hannah's life was started and accelerated by the rumors of her in her school. If it weren't for the first rumor of the book, then later events that happened later in the book wouldn't have happened to her.

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Mood

Mood. This is the reason that I didn't like this book as much as most people. Most of the time, the mood was depressing and blue. Reading the book, listening to Hannah Baker, knowing from the beginning that she killed herself, was quite dismal for me to read for too long. The mood was strong too, making me feel pessimistic and sadly pensive after I put the book down. Clay Jensen's feelings of Hannah did not help the dark mood anymore. He loved Hannah Baker, and listening to her story on why she killed herself was even more depressing because he expressed his feelings for her the whole time. Especially when his tape was playing, he recalled on how much he loved Hannah and had deep feeling for her even though she had put him in the tapes of the reasons why she killed herself. Hearing his part of her story torn him up inside and reading that part made me feel almost as sad as Clay. While reading this novel, it felt like there was a giant dark rain cloud above my head.

When the mood wasn't too depressing, it turned into twisted and disturbing feeling, like when Hannah made sick jokes about dying. This mood didn't make me want to put the book down, but rather read more so I could forget the weird morbid feeling that the last sentence gave off. Some parts of the plot made the mood awkward and queasy, which was even worse than the depressing mood I got from the rest of the book.