Reviews with content warning for Grief - Treize raisons

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Treize raisons by Jay Asher

52 reviews

creolelitbelle's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I knew how the story would end and Hannah's reasons, because I've already watched the Netflix show in it's entirety. The audiobook is done very well with Clay's confusion and distraught state whole listening and Hannah's emotions throughout telling her story. The book has landed on banned and challenged lists for years due to its topic of suicide (among other issues), but teens especially need to be openly discussing the issue. Teens contemplate, attempt, and even commit suicide often, and I appreciate Asher for using Hannah's voice to show how usually the cause is not one problem but the compounding of multiple life happenings.

The book mostly occurs all in one afternoon, evening, and night as Clay listens to the taped after finding them delivered to his house. He cuts in giving his thoughts on the events as Hannah tells her truths, and for me that added nuance to understanding who Hannah and all the people cast in her reasons are. I love how accurate season 1 of the show is to the book, except it plays out over more than one night. The show stuck with me, and the book will, too, in its own way.

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crabinspace's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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rody's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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unusuallyy's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

TW // discussion of suicidal thoughts in a character; brief mention of personal experience with suicidal thoughts; swearing; brief discussion of a character's rape

i'm going to preface this by saying that this is a two-sided book. for some people, it's been a great help and has connected them with the characters and made them feel seen. for others, it's been the opposite.

for me, it was amazing at first - that's why it became my new favorite book for a couple of months and i'd left a five star review here. but then i noticed the issues.

i came back to common sense media and goodreads, and i noticed all the negative reviews about hannah and her being a vengeful little a-hole. and these were true. upon rethinking the book's plot, i came to several conclusions:

1) while hannah's thoughts could be justified (i'd had thoughts based on social issues before) depression, ptsd, or getting help was never discussed. it didn't provide another way out. there was no hope from the start, making it an unrealistic depiction of real life.

2) it makes all the kids in the high school seem like dickheads, and when i read it, i was in seventh or eighth grade (where i live, this is still 'middle school'). this made me worry much more about high school, and whether or not everything was going to go okay. normally it's just a few people who are being terrible; hannah's point of view made everyone (except perhaps clay?) awful people.

3) hannah pins the blame for her suicide on her old friend who drifted away from her...and includes in her 'reason' tape that one of the reasons she's gone is because her friend got raped?? that makes no sense whatsoever. why did something that happened to someone else ... ??? idk, mate. maybe it's because she chose not to intervene and feels guilty, but that was really her fault, not jessica's!! she doesn't even send a tape to the apist, either. that's practically victim-blaming.

4) it portrays school counselors as unhelpful, and not good resources for change. sure, the new 'school counselor' is also the english teacher, and perhaps not professionally trained for such a job. but that was no reason to write this counselor as one of the reasons! from what i've experienced, school counselors have been fairly helpful, and painting this character as just a bit better than vecna's puppet in stranger things season 4 is not helpful!

5) it's an amalgam of ideas, not planned to work together very well. the cassette tape idea from the museum asher mentions is smashed together with a random notion to make something involving the "baker's dozen". this is a novel about a young woman's suicide - there shouldn't be any jokes to it! suicide is a serious issue, and it almost feels like this book generally treats suicide as a nonserious, valid way of getting out and getting revenge - which leads into my next point...

6) it romanticizes suicide. this book inspired my idea to make my own thirteen reasons why list, and had me considering following in hannah's footsteps and getting revenge on the people who'd made my life worse. honestly, such an idea should never be planted in teens' heads - it can have devastating consequences.

7) it insinuates the idea that people who are depressed or considering suicide have always a concise list of developed, separate reasons before going through with it. this makes no sense, and from personal experience the reasons for going through with it are never distinct or separate from one another and they kind of bleed together. through the haze, none of it really made sense or was 'reasonable' at all.

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kryolitee's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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martumansilla's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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avishajain's review against another edition

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informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

(3.5 stars)

It was not as.. depressing (?) as I was expecting it to be (according to what I'd heard), and although I understand that Hannah going through what she went through, one would take their own life, but me, as a reader, was not able to connect to it fully. It's like.. I wasn't feeling what Hannah would have been feeling or what clay was feeling and his reactions felt.. I just didn't FEEL what he was feeling, if it makes sense? I saw their reactions and they logically made sense, but I didn't feel the same. Obviously I'm not saying that it wasn't tragic for them, but what I'm saying is that I, as a reader, didn't feel the same things clay/Hannah did.
Regardless, this was a book with a really good and important message, and was written very well. It was a very strong and needed reminder of just how much our tiny little actions affect someone and how we should just.. be more considerate and nice and just a good person in general. Good book, would recommend, but don't go in expecting to come out depressed (which we sometimes go into a book wanting to feel so strongly, which this book, imo, won't make you feel anything too strong). Still recommend it, though.

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