Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Usually, when you read a  book about suicide, you meet the victim long before they commit their final act.  You read the warning signs, wonder why their friends don't notice, why nobody intervened or reached out to help.  In Jay Asher's debut novel Thirteen Reasons Why, you get a clear picture of the victim's (Hannah Baker) thought process.  It answers the questions you always wanted to ask the victim, mainly WHY?  Why would you kill yourself?  What led you down this path?  Why didn't you reach out to ask for help?  When the book begins, Hannah Baker is already dead.  But she leaves her legacy in the form of audio tapes that get passed from person to person, each who she deems played some kind of role in her death, knowingly or otherwise.  In some cases, the domino affect is enough to make you sick to your stomach, as you realize cause and effects at the same time that the main character Clay, her friend who listens attentively and in horror to these tapes.  He needs to know what he did to contribute to her early death.  In the end, the reader is left with a powerful lesson about how we choose to treat each other.  Pick it up.