Buying nice and fancy books and reading them has always been one of my guilty pleasures since I was a kid. Buying books from book fairs in school, bookstores, and one of those second hand book thailaas has always been such a fascinating experience.
From Charles Dickens books from the school library, to R.L Stein and Meg Cabot's books from a friend's collection, I now realize how blessed I was to have read so many books in my childhood and to have actually gained a lot of learning experience and life lessons from these books. And not to mention the vast imagination books can create and leave an impact for one's entire life.
Yes, such books do exist that can change one's perception about something and give a life-long learning lessons. Just a couple of days back, I ended up buying a copy of 'Thirteen Reasons Why' by Jay Asher and I think it's safe to say, it truly changed my life. TRW is a young adult novel based on tragedy of a girl named Hannah Baker, who attempts suicide because of several reasons, and succeeds. After the tragedy, one of the main characters called Clay Jenson receives a marked map from his school's locker and a parcel addressed to him with mysteries set of tapes. Upon listening to the tapes, Clay uncovers that the tapes were recorded by Hannah Baker herself before she died, and in those seven tapes, there were thirteen reasons described by Hannah for why she killed herself, and one of them, was Clay. As the book goes on, Clay finds out a lot of things about Hannah that he did not know, and finds out more about the people in Hannah's life that drove Hannah to the verge of having multiple mental breakdowns, and yet, no one could see the signs that were always there to help Hannah through this time.
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The book spoke to me on a very personal level. It is so important to spread awareness about mental health and suicide prevention amongst depressed teens. Little things in life can lead to one person literally wasting their life. As the quote goes in the book,
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After reading TRW, I was an emotional mess tbh. TRW left a huge impact on me. To say the least, after reading this book, I want to be a better person, a better friend, and a better listener for the people around me! This book makes me want to be kind and nice to people, for we don't know what battles a person must be fighting constantly and the indirect impact our every move can make on people's lives. We might be taught all these things since childhood, but somewhere along the lines, we tend to forget these important life lessons.
I was however sad how Hannah's suicide could not be prevented. In the book, Hannah also goes through a traumatic experiance of witnessing her unconscious bestfriend getting raped by a senior, but due to being very intoxicated herself, she couldnt stop the rape from happening. Apart from that, she also thinks she is the root cause of a big accident where one of her schoolmate dies in. And on top of all that, she gets abused herself just a couple of days later, by the same senior who raped her friend. This was the last blow for the poor soul. It's hard to think what Hannah must be going through during all this, and all the times she tried to reach out for help from her parents/counselors, only to be shut down without noticing her severe suicidal symptoms. The book also reveals all the horrid reactions from everyone who recieved the tapes from hannah and their reactions after listening to them.
In the end of the book, theres a hint of a scenario where theres hope of Clay saving yet another life of a girl who is showing all the similar signs as Hannah. What has been done in the past cannot be undone; however, it can sure as hell be prevented to never happen again. I'd rate this book 5/5 and would highly recommend everyone to read the book!
Till I fight my writer's block and find the courage to write more book reviews, this is me, signing off!
Digitally Yours',
Wurduh Jaffri
