13 Reasons Why - Jay Asher | Review

"Read this sensational mystery bestseller before you watch the 13-part Netflix series, executive produced by Selena Gomez. This special edition is complete with exclusive behind-the-scenes content including a 16-page full-colour photo insert featuring scenes from the show, and interviews with the cast and crew.

You can't stop the future. You can't rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play.

Clay Jensen returns home from school one day to find a mysterious box with his name on it, outside his front door. Inside he discovers a series of cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker - his classmate and crush. Only, she committed suicide two weeks earlier. On the first tape, Hannah explains that there are 13 reasons why she did what she did - and Clay is one of them.

If he listens, Clay will find out how he made the list - what he hears will change his life forever."

I have so many mixed feelings about this book and the way it made me feel differently about the television series based on the book. Obviously, this is a review of the book and not the TV series but I will touch on a few things.

Firstly, I did enjoy reading this book, I didn't think that it was a "bad" book per-say, hence the three-star rating, I enjoyed the writing style and the way that the author differentiated between the two main characters voices was a great technique and was very easy to understand who was saying what. As far as I know, from books that I've come across - this is a very unique story, and upon its release was one of the first books that really spoke in-depth about suicide, especially in the younger generations, and is so prevalent in today's societies. Suicide is an incredibly important topic and isn't something that we should avoid talking about.

Although, on the other hand, do I think this topic was articulated correctly? Absolutely not. Being the first of its kind, released back in 2007 I think that the author had really good intentions when sharing this story with the audience and highlighting mental health struggles to those who aren't familiar with them. The main character 'Hannah' may be considered to be "self-destructive" with her mental health, which so many of us are guilty of feeling at some point in our lives when things really do feel like too much and we just spiral and make things even worse for ourselves, although I don't really think this was the correct representation of Depression and Suicide that the author should have used in a book targeted at teenagers and young adults, I don't think it was okay for this book to justify these self-destructive spirals, which I think is dealt with much better in the television series, and perhaps could've been more in-depth if this wasn't such a short book.

With this book being so short, there were a few sections that were graphic and others weren't which felt slightly odd to me, the choices the author made to make these sections more graphic than others, no spoilers.

Ever since the television show was picked up by Netflix, over three years ago now, it has always been in the spotlight for being a very controversial show and story-line, and many have asked the question "Does this show glamorise suicide and mental health?" And as I watched the show before reading the book I always thought that, as someone with their own mental health struggles, that the TV show was a fair and reasonably accurate portrayal of someone suffering from Depression and intrusive thoughts. Although, after reading the book, I do indeed believe that the show made very obvious choices that definitely did glamorise suicide for the audience, one of the most prevalent ones being the way in which the suicide was carried out, which in the book happens in a couple of sentences with no excessive detail, whereas in the show, we very much see the suicide in a graphic, slightly gruesome manner and the pure emotion of the people around her. Which Netflix obviously realised they'd made a mistake with, as they eventually removed that scene from the episode.

Overall, I'm really glad that I did read this book and got to see the differences of the adaptation from the original story and believe that the author upon writing this book, did have good intentions for the story.

(just a heads up, this does not mean I support Jay Asher as an author and would not actively fund his career due to his actions unrelated to this book)