Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher was a waste of precious time that I will never get back. I feel that some of the life may have been sucked out of me after I read this book. I am warning you now: if you haven’t already, DO NOT READ IT.


The concept is actually pretty good; it is about a girl who commits suicide and leaves tapes containing thirteen reasons why she killed herself. The problem is that the author completely butchered anything that could have been interesting about this novel. Now, I do not really want to blatantly bash the author, but, I feel that an apology should be issued by him to all who have read this book.


Clay Jenkins, the main character, is just a whiny, self-pitying teenager. He believed that he could have saved Hannah Baker, the girl who committed suicide, and Asher made him sound rather conceited. Most of the book features him whining about how he felt and how his feelings were the faults of others. The book basically revolves around Clay’s feelings and honestly, I do not think anybody who has read the book really cared about his repetitive griping.


Hannah Baker was a stuck up, conceited, attention craving monster. She killed herself over things that happen in most teenagers’ lives and things she should have gotten over right after they happened. She believed that people should have helped and paid attention to her, and that she deserved more than what she got from others. But what did she get from others? Well, she got constant attention. All the guys at her school were after her and she thought that this was a great reason to kill herself. So, people really liked her, great reason to commit suicide, huh? In her tapes, she was constantly blaming people for her committing suicide, even though her reasons were severely dumb. She made people feel bad for her, even though they did nothing wrong and that disgusted me.


Another really bothersome aspect was that the people who Hannah blamed seemed senseless and brainwashed. Hannah told them that they were the reasons why she committed suicide and they didn’t question her motives or stop to think that her reasons were petty and ridiculous.


In conclusion, this was an atrocious novel with unconvincing characters and it was very badly written. How anyone could like it is completely beyond me.