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thecheapreader

The Cheap Reader

The Cheap Reader is Alison. She works in a library and dreams of one day becoming a Youth Services Librarian. She loves reading and has a soft spot in her heart for YA and MG fiction.

Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher This is an incredibly powerful book. It's pretty hard to sum up my thoughts on it but I will try.Thirteen Reasons Why deals with the difficult issue of teen suicide. Even more difficult, it deals with how someone gets to that point. It's not an overnight process. It's not a flip of a switch. It's something that builds on itself over time. I thought it was really interesting hearing about all the individual people involved. Maybe some of the things these people did weren't "bad enough" to get Hannah to this point. If they were an individual, isolated incident, I would agree that they were horrible but something that could be coped with. But the thing with bullying, tormenting, and downright hateful teenage behavior is it's never an isolated incident. Things always build and snowball out of control.This book reminded me a lot of Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes. You really stop and think about how you were in high school. You might not have meant to be hurtful with what you said to someone but it did hurt them. Or worse, you DID mean to hurt them but you had no idea what else they were going through. I'm so glad I'm not a teenager anymore and for the most part my peers are past this nasty stage.I thought the idea of going back and forth between Hannah and Clay was a cool narrative tool. I did find it confusing in places though. There were times I had to reread a passage several times because I didn't understand what was going on with Clay. Maybe it could have wrote more clearly? The writing style was great though. I found myself flying through the book in an afternoon.The bottom line? It's a difficult book content wise but absolutely worth a read.