Thirteen Reasons Why By Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why 
by Jay Asher 

Jessica RiffeKincaid's review 

Oct 06, 11  ·  edit

bookshelves: fiction, young-adult, bio-auto-self-biography

Read from September 27 to October 06, 2011

A girl, feeling alone, depressed and let down by those closest to her, prepares everyone that she was close to and had confided in, with cassette tapes explaing in her own words, 13 reasons why she committed suicide. She begins by providing tapes to someone left in charge to see to it that her message is carried on thru the delivery of a box containing nothing but her final words, recorded in her own voice, about why she decided that she was not meant to live in the world anymore and about the people that drove her to making that decision. Her high-school crush, who was too shy in the end to tell her how he felt about her, thinking that he maybe could have changed her mind about her taking her own life, finds out everything about her by receiving those tapes and listening to them in a day. He discovers the rumors that where visciously spread about her where un-true, that those that were "supposed" to be her true friends and the lies they spreaded, how girls were raped, pushed around and forced upon in physcial, and sexual manners by young men, still just boys, and unable to defend themselves against them, going un-punished for their actions. Girls, pretending to be straight A students and the mindset expected of them in that type of position, faslified, pretending to be someone they are not. How, a teacher could have prevented this girl's suicude from happening if he had only asked the right, simple questions by showing that he cared about her as a person. Her legacy and those of the students at her school that show everyone who their "fake" person is but reveals their "true" selves by hitting and killing someone that goes to their school after leaving a party, having been too drunk to drive, but decided no one could tell. How boys took advantage of young girls that were too drunk to put up a fight, behind closed doors, taking something from them that was'nt theirs to take, but did so without their permission while laying unconscious and their male counterparts allowing these atrocious acts to take place with their knowledge.

This was wonderful, dark, scarey, and so close to the truths of those in school growing from young kids into young adults.