A YA Novel Filled With Too Many YA Problems


Just finished Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher.



Clay Jensen receives a mysterious package in the mail, which contains 7 cassette tapes. The voice on the tapes belongs to Hannah Baker, a girl from his school who recently killed herself. From beyond the grave (too cliché?) Hannah directs Clay, and the other people who will receive the tapes, to listen to her story and find out how they played a part in her death.

The plot sounds interesting right?! Well I thought so too at first, but unfortunately the book fell short. To start off with, it’s a young adult novel (Yes, I know another one. Don’t judge me) and instead of being clever or insightful I thought it was only filled with teenage angst. Okay, I know. It’s a YA novel about suicide what did I expect? Well, I kind of expected there to be some mystery or serious wrongdoing on the parts of the tape receivers but no dice. Instead, the book mostly centers on high school drama, which caused me to roll my eyes at the stupid stuff Hannah couldn’t get over. 

Even still, in the beginning of the book you’re led to believe that the last person to receive the tape did something unforgivable to Hannah, so I chugged along and didn’t judge her too harshly. I mean something really bad must have happened to cause her to do something so permanent. But no, the end just kind of pitters out and you’re left feeling kind of pissed off.

Another thing that bugged me , but I quickly got used to, was the way the author arranged the dialogue. One minute you’re following Hannah’s voice on the tape recording and in the next Clay’s mom is interrupting him. It was very jumpy and weird at first.

The only saving grace of the book was Clay, and when Hannah describes why Clay is in her recordings it’s actually quite touching. But, and it’s a big fat but, that one chapter does not save the book! So my advice is to skip it, unless, of course, you're a high schooler who needs to learn to be nice because your actions can hurt others. 

I do feel obligated to mention that this book has won a ton of awards, so maybe I’m crazy in not liking it. But I doubt it.

And onto the next…I’m going to start reading the Grimm Fairytales but as you can imagine the book is crazy long so I may only read a few of the stories at a time while consecutively reading something else. 

More to come. B

2 comments:

Sara D.

Ummm will you please get out of my head?? I JUST downloaded the Grimm Fairytales to my Kindle account earlier this week!!

Unknown

Haha Great minds and all... Although I'm super mad because I just bought the book at Barnes & Noble, I didn't realize the Kindle had it for free, argh!

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