I’ve always been a firm believer in reading the book before seeing it on the big screen. In honor of the new Netflix Original Series Thirteen Reasons Why release on March 31st, I decided to read the book first. The new original series was actually a young adult book by Jay Asher, that was released in 2007.
Source: wikipedia
Here’s the premise of the book:
“Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah’s voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why.
Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah’s pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.”
(Source: Goodreads)
I’m so happy I picked up this book because I found the narrative to be emotional and compelling. This is one of those books that really makes you think about everything, how we treat others, and responsibility for our actions. The book was definitely creative with the tapes in how they conveyed this topic but I thought it made a page-turning read. The premise of the novel itself is suspenseful so when I was reading the book, I could not put it down cause I just wanted to know what would happen next. I don’t want to spoil the book or the series but I definitely recommend the book before watching the show!
After reading the book I watched the trailer and I’m interested to see how Netflix will adapt this powerful book into a tv-series and how similar or different from the book it will be. From some clips of the trailer, I can tell the tv adaptation will be different but I hope that if it is different, it still keeps the powerful messages from the book.
Here’s the trailer if you want to check it out: