Thirteen Reasons Why- a book that will haunt you

“You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything. . . affects everything.” 

This is Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, a book  I could not stop reading because it was impossible to do so. 13 reasons why Hannah Baker decided to end her life and Clay Jensen is about to find them all. He just have to listen to all the audio tapes that arrived to his house. Could he be one of the reasons? And if he is, what did he do?

Thirteen Reasons why is a book I absolutely loved. Not because YA fiction is my favorite book genre but because the story got me and made me read this book in a couple of hours. It’s a roller coaster of emotions, that in the end will come and haunt you.  All the intelligent words and reasoning around Hannah decision turn this book into a meditation. You heard that right. After finishing it, I had to spend some time in silence and think about it, about human life and the impact we have over our peers.

Do I relate to this book? Of course I do, as any of you would. We’ve all been there, to high-school. We’ve all been gossiped about or gossiping about and we’ve all felt lonely at times. It’s the age, but at times, things are lost of control. Sometimes people are hurt  above our understanding and reasoning. Because not everyone’s the same and what you think is funny can bother the person you’re talking to. And Hannah Baker did get hurt, an awful quite a lot. But nobody realized. “No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.”  Cause everyone is self absorbed, especially as a teenager.

So she didn’t find any solution but to end it, end all this mess and torments and suffering. Since no one turned out to help her she found no other choice.  If you hear a song that makes you cry and you don’t want to cry anymore, you don’t listen to that song anymore.
But you can’t get away from yourself. You can’t decide not to see yourself anymore. You can’t decide to turn off the noise in your head.”

You are going to find and know Hannah, through the tapes she leaves behind. Which is quite shocking as no one truly knew her before she died. You will have to find out why she did it and that curiosity will make you read the whole novel.

Even though I loved Jay Asher’s novel and gets 4,5 out of 5 stars, I wouldn’t recommend it to teenagers who suffer from depression or anxiety. It was quite tough for me at times and I am a grown up, after all.

The message behind this story is loud and clear: listen a, observe and understand. While dealing with people with depression you just have to listen and observe, in order to understand what they are going through. We need to be more aware, in order to help each other. A brilliant read, that made me understand things seen from a different perspective.

Unlike old age or cancer, no one anticipates a suicide. They simply left without a chance to get things in order.