“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”

— Jay Asher

Many of us have probably seen the Netflix series that came following the popular release of this novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, but how many of us can say that we read the novel before watching the series?

Written in 2007, Thirteen Reasons Why told the story through the point of view of Clay Jenson as he found a strange package on his porch with his name on it. This was the start of his adventure to retrieve 13 tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, a classmate who committed suicide prior to the beginning of the novel. This novel will take readers through the story of Hannah’s pain and the interesting things that Clay discovers on the way

Teens who have dealt with suicidal thoughts can understand and sympathize with Hannah. Even if you haven’t read the book but watched the Netflix, Hannah went through A LOT of pain and didn’t have a support system that she could lean to talk about her problems. I highly recommend reading the novel, though the ending was a little weird with a mentioning of a characters name (won’t reveal for spoiler alerts), but this overall was an amazing page turner for finding out who was next on the tape.

One of my favorite quotes from the novel is, “When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything…affects everything”. The reason I love this quote is for how this can relate to everyone; even if you weren’t bullied, it takes one action or one conversation that can totally change your life for the better, or for the worse.

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In terms of the Netflix series that released in 2017, I was 50-50 about it. I was living in the dorms when the series came out but I wanted to read the novel first, so my roommate watched the series and we compared each chapter to each of the tapes to see what stayed the same, what changed and what was dropped.

Season 1 was a close adaptation from the book, but there were some changes that the director made that had me think that they were going to try to make this into a series, and sadly, they did. With the release of Season 2 & 3, I decided not to watch it because those two seasons were just up for interpretation for how the novel ended, Hannah’s story ended. The cliffhanger they left for the story to continue I was not a huge fan of and the fact that they are dragging Hannah’s story out makes me feel uncomfortable. They’re isn’t much you can do with it since the last tape was her final words before she committed suicide.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Leave a comment below