I subscribe to Audible, and I had two credits to use.  “Thirteen Reasons Why” was one of the books that I chose.  I’ve had it in my queue for awhile, but I knew it was time to listen/read it after reading the book description from Amazon:

“When Clay Jenson plays the cassette tapes he received in a mysterious package, he’s surprised to hear the voice of dead classmate Hannah Baker. He’s one of 13 people who receive Hannah’s story, which details the circumstances that led to her suicide. Clay spends the rest of the day and long into the night listening to Hannah’s voice and going to the locations she wants him to visit. The text alternates, sometimes quickly, between Hannah’s voice (italicized) and Clay’s thoughts as he listens to her words, which illuminate betrayals and secrets that demonstrate the consequences of even small actions. Hannah, herself, is not free from guilt, her own inaction having played a part in an accidental auto death and a rape. The message about how we treat one another, although sometimes heavy, makes for compelling reading.”

It made me think that when someone dies tragically (even if it isn’t suicide) or is severely depressed, and it isn’t due to a nature or murder, there are things that lead up to it getting worse and worse.  People’s actions (or inaction) causes that person to fall into a hole so deep that any attempt to try to dig themselves out is of no avail.  Even when they feel they have made even the tiniest success in getting better, someone or something comes to push them right back down.  They can’t even face themselves in the mirror because all they see looking back at them is a broken reflection staring right back at them.

This is a book that should be read in middle schools and high schools around the world. There are so  many times that people see someone who is suffering, and don’t do anything about it.  Be it cause they are afraid about what others will think, or because of their own selfishness, they allow that person to slip away.  Maybe if people learn early enough, people can be saved from themselves.

It’s exactly what happened to my sister.  She didn’t commit suicide like Hannah, but every day, someone was there to make her world crumble even more around her.  After coming back from war, where she saw things that no human should ever have to see, and she was denied the right to be with her family, she had to go back to a place where all she found was people who were trying to sabotage her out of jealousy, guys trying to constantly take advantage of her, and so-called friends who abandoned her at the first sight of trouble. I hope that those people wake up every day, and feel the guilt and pain that they caused my sister. I really do.

She didn’t have her family with her to help and protect her.  Yes, we tried. Talking to her every day via chat, webcam, phone, but it wasn’t the same as us being there to fend off these vicious people who hide behind their masks. Yes, masks! All she wanted was for someone to help her, and all they did was attack. It seems like things in the book just don’t happen in school.  People continue this behavior even years later.  In the military, it seems to run rampant.

After reading this book, and constantly feeling like my heart was going to rip at any moment, I realize that I have to do what I plan.  I do not want someone else suffering the way Hannah, my sister, and so many others have.

It’s definitely a book that everyone should read, even if only once.