From the very beginning, you know that this will not be a "happy story". It starts with the main character, Clay Jensen, talking about a package he got in the mail. But this is no ordinary package. It is a package he got in the mail from Hannah Baker, a girl he knew who had just committed suicide. The contents of this package change Clay's life. As Clay delves into the content of this package, he learns who made the most powerful marks on Hannah for her to consider taking her life.
Not only is the storytelling so compelling and powerful, but ingrained with a deep message. Hannah's story inspires authentic empathy as she invites the reader, to listen to her, to understand what happened to her and how it made her feel. She doesn't beat down on those she feels acted wrongly, but rather implicitly asks them: "What was going through your mind when you acted the way you did? Why did you want to do that? Did you truly want to do that?" And even though it never says it, the whole story seems to be asking you two questions:
1)How would you feel if you were in this person's shoes?
2) If you had known that your actions would make this sort of impact, would you have gone through with them anyway?
1)How would you feel if you were in this person's shoes?
2) If you had known that your actions would make this sort of impact, would you have gone through with them anyway?
Some characters will spark hate, while others will gain your trust and affection. But all of them have two thing in common: they will teach you something and make you think. And in all of this, one thing's for sure: you will not be the same person after finishing this book as you were when you started.
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Thirteen Reasons Why Review by Courtney Justus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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