Krysten’s Review

I have mixed feelings about this book. I haven’t decided if I like it or not.

On the one hand, I think it’s good to talk about taboo subjects. Mental health issues in particular have this dark stigma surrounding them. People get so uncomfortable about suicide—and with good reason—but where is someone who needs help supposed to go to get it, if no one will discuss it? There are certain things that everyone should be educated on: Grammar, interpersonal skills, adding and subtracting, how to cook, etc… and recognizing the signs of someone in crisis. We need more education, more awareness, on topics like this. Asher’s book and the resulting Netflix series is one way to do that. A lot of people have said it glamorizes suicide, but I don’t see it that way at all. It started a dialogue and tells people it’s okay to feel sad, depressed, angry, etc. You are not alone. There are people who understand and people who can help. Don’t. Give. Up.

So in that sense, I get why Hannah had so much anger toward these thirteen people. She tried to reach out at the end, and they refused to see the signs. They ignored her. I can see why she felt like she had no one to turn to. It reminds me of a highly publicized incident in the ’60s in NYC, where a woman screamed for help, and dozens of people in a nearby apartment building all heard her, but they did nothing. [Source] She was raped and killed. Everyone thought someone else would do it, but no one did, and she died. This is the society we live in: Everyone shirks responsibility, passes it off on someone else, pretends not to hear as they look the other way, ignores uncomfortable things.

And in the end, Clay uses what he’s learned and reaches out to someone who might be in a similar position. This is the goal. To change people’s thinking, to force them to think about how their actions affect others, and to urge them to reach out to someone in need.

On the other hand, I thought Hannah was vindictive and selfish. I get it. She had been hurt, betrayed, disappointed by people she thought cared, and it affected her. It made high school uncomfortable and lonely for her. But it’s uncomfortable for most people. And to use the very incidents that hurt her in order to hurt other people was hypocritical and vengeful. She made sure she had the last word, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Then again, if you know anything about suicide, if you’ve known anyone who’s actually gone through with it, you know: Suicide is selfish. Suicide is messy. It has a ripple effect, and it’s something your loved ones never recover from. Someone who put that much thought into how others’ actions have affected her surely realized that hers would affect them in return. Just like they didn’t care that they hurt her (or so that was her perception), she didn’t care that she hurt them.

That’s not to say that people’s lives can’t suck. Hannah had lots of reasons to be upset. People are mean, careless, insensitive. But these things aren’t life or death. These things weren’t worth killing yourself over. Maybe it’s not my place to say one way or another, because everyone reacts to things differently. But my life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, and I myself have been in situations where I felt hopeless and thought things would never get better. But I’ve held on long enough to learn that everything is ephemeral. Nothing lasts forever (even high school). This, too, shall pass. You just have to be patient, learn coping skills, and most importantly, ask for help when you need it.