THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher

by TPS reader hickst20

When Clay Jensen returns home from school one day, he sees a package on his porch with his name on it. Inside of the box he discovers seven cassette tapes. On these tapes, the voice of his crush and classmate, Hannah Baker, describes the reasons why she committed suicide two weeks before. In the tapes, she describes thirteen people that made her end her life. Clay is shocked when he realizes that he is on the tapes and that they get sent to every person that has wronged her. In the tapes, Hannah gives instructions that after the person listens to the tapes they must mail it to the next person mentioned after them. Clay goes everywhere Hannah describes in her tapes and becomes almost obsessed with learning about her past. Will Clay ever get over Hannah’s tragic death or will he always wonder about the what ifs of the past? Find out in this amazing and moving book written by the brilliant Jay Asher.

THE PROGRAM by Suzanne Young

by TPS reader woolworthv19

Sloane Barstow lives in a world where expressing your feelings are forbidden. An epidemic of teen suicide starts sweeping the world causing parents, the government, and psychologists to go into a frenzy. With the loss of her brother, Sloane finds herself having to be more cautious than ever, even the slightest hint of sadness or depression can send her to the only proven treatment, The Program. Nearly everyday Sloane sees someone new from her school getting taken by workers from the government, called handlers, to The Program. Once sent to The Program all of your “infected memories” are erased causing you to become a completely different person than you were before. You lose all memories of your friends and have very few left about your family; they tailor your life to the way they want it to be. As more and more of her friends are taken into The Program or committing suicide, Sloane finds herself leaning on her boyfriend James, the only one left she can cry in front of. Together they plan to stay together forever but as the depression begins to hit harder and the amount of handlers begin to increase can they stick together, or will they end up forgetting about each other?

The Program is the first of four books in The Program series. Though this book seemed slightly depressing and sad, the plot twists had me unable to put the book down. Even if you are not a fan of dystopian novels, I highly recommend reading this novel. Suzanne Young does an excellent job of giving you backstory, and throughout the book she adds flashbacks keeping you aware of Sloane’s life before and after the epidemic and how greatly it has impacted her. Though it was a bit obvious that Sloane was eventually going to be taken to The Program, Young did an amazing job of adding in characters like Michael Realm and Kevin that made her time in The Program and when she first got out so much more interesting. Also, the addition of Miller and Lacey helped give the book more detail as the reader was able to see how much The Program can change people and how some were willing to die for love and their memories rather than go into The Program and forget their memories. Overall, I would highly rate the book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.

THIRTEEN REASONS WHY – Jay Asher

TPS Reader feenstram19

Clay Jensen, an average looking student who was nice to everyone. Hannah Baker, teased by her classmates. had a terrible reputation after her old relationship with Justin. Clay had started forming a crush on Hannah after an incident you’ll just have to read about. Two weeks after she committed suicide, Clay received a box with his name on it, and when he opened it, there were thirteen tapes, where Hannah explained, in order, all of the events that had caused her to commit suicide. How it works is the first person on the tape passes it to the person on the tape after them, until the last tape. Throughout all of these tapes, you hear the stories and events that had slowly built up into her suicide, starting from the day that she moved into the city/state that she had lived in. One mistake had caused so many bad stories and so many bad things to happen to her, but now you’ll just have to find out about the last few years of Hannah’s life, and why her life took such a wrong turn.

I loved this book because it portrays an idea about bullying and suicide, which no one seems to focus on lately considering bullying and suicide is still happening and no one is stopping it. Hannah shows her opinion on some of the big problems in the world, and her opinion on how bullying can cause someone to go into a bad state and make them want to somehow hurt themselves. I recommend this to people who like to think deeply about things.