Review: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Summary from Goodreads:
You can't stop the future. You can't rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret. . . is to press play.

Clay Jensen doesn't want anything to do with the tapes Hannah Baker made. Hannah is dead. Her secrets should be buried with her.

Then Hannah's voice tells Clay that his name is on her tapes-- and that he is, in some way, responsible for her death.

All through the night, Clay keeps listening. He follows Hannah's recorded words throughout his small town. . .

. . .and what he discovers changes his life forever.

Wow. This book was just wow. It deals with such a topical and touchy area in a wonderful and sensitive manner.

When I saw this sitting on the shelves in my local bookshop I had to have it. I then devoured it in just over a day. When I started I was slightly skeptical as to how it was going to work with the tapes. I thought that I might get bored with it. I didn't. Thank God. It was such a page turner and I just couldn't wait to see what Clay would hear next from Hannah's tapes.

The characters were very well developed. Hannah's story at first had me confused and then I began to feel so sorry for her. At times I was in tears reading it. The book managed to keep shocking me with every turn of the page. When I thought it was going to go in a certain direction it just did a complete u-turn and it left me guessing until the complete end.

The writing was very strong and you could really feel the emotion. I could almost imagine Hannah's voice talking to me, telling me her story. You feel every emotion from Clay and from Hannah and it was just such a wonderful thing.

Even when I finished the book I was thinking about it for ages after it. It really stays with you and makes you think about the way that you treat people. I loved it so much. If I hadn't been so emotional after reading it I would have started reading again straight away.