listen when i heard about a dark academia book challenging deeply ingrained racist institutions I was impressed and excited because I'd never seen thalisten when i heard about a dark academia book challenging deeply ingrained racist institutions I was impressed and excited because I'd never seen that message so blatantly expressed in the genre without pandering to white people even a little before. but what I thought and what this book led me to believe that entailed for the first three quarters was something along the lines of "being white and growing up in a primarily white society with a history of slavery and deep racism conditions white people to be inherently racist and that is visible to some degree in everything they do and that is why people of colour automatically don't trust them and instead of complaining about how acting like calling them out on their racism is a bigger crime than said racism itself and doubling down defensively they should shut the fuck up and listen to poc and consciously work on unlearning the bias reinforced to them every day which almost none of them are willing to do because it hurts their fragile egos so yeah all white people are racist" - which is a great premise that would inevitably piss said white people off and i loved it?
but what we got was (spoiler alert) "every character in this story except the 3 Black main characters including the press and LITERALLY every single white person living in the ENTIRE town with zero exceptions are part of this intricate horrible and extremely complicated secret society plan thing where they go out of their way to torture the only two Black students at the school to death every year because they're Black and want to kill all Black people" and I'm sorry but I just found it hard to suspend my disbelief that much. im pretty sure not every racist is this much of a cartoon villain. this was so bafflingly loosely plotted
that aside if you ignore the whole mystery component this had great writing great character work amazing social commentary and I'm still definitely reading the next book faridah publishes at all costs...more
decided to reread this now that I'm in a pretty good place mentally to see how it'd affect my perception, and...I definitelysomanymixedfeelingsuhghhhh
decided to reread this now that I'm in a pretty good place mentally to see how it'd affect my perception, and...I definitely had a better experience than the last time lol
I still don't think I can rate this higher than three stars though.
important disclaimer: please, please do not read this book if you have depression or think you're even mildly vulnerable to suicide ideation. it did not do good things to me when I did and yes, experiences vary, but it...isn't an ideal book for that audience. this book was revolutionary in starting up so many conversations, especially in the mid-2000s, and it was a fantastic, heartfelt attempt that guided thousands of neurotypical teenagers to a more empathetic, open-minded perspective for its time. however...there are better books to pick up if you're actually in the said position. trust me.
- this book is phenomenal when read as a dramatic thriller or something. the writing is some of the most addictive I've read, the pacing is perfect, it makes for a great recreational read tbh. Asher seamlessly switches perspectives and it only makes the prose more engaging.
- this book is not the tv show. please do not endorse that mess.
- yet, it fails to address a lot of what the tv show did. I understand where she was coming from, but for hannah to essentially ruin these thirteen lives when half the "culprits" were nothing more than insecure or conflicted teenagers was...uhm. not great. this could've potentially to probably led to permanent mental and emotional damage, a lifelong burden and even copycat suicides for those involved. that was handled really callously.
- the romanticization of suicide as some sort of twisted revenge fantasy is a whole other mess. it was...not a good message to send but that's been discussed enough and I hope we can all agree that was a damaging narrative
- this book is great for educating neurotypical kids but doesn't offer any solace to actually depressed kids. or even affirm hannah's depression on page. instead, it sends a message that asking for help is futile and pointless and addressing your critical mental health will only backfire on you. I understand why Mr. Porter was written to do what he did, but it's a fairly disturbing message to send to a depressed teen audience.
- I haven't seen too many reviews mentioning this but I really appreciated how ahead of his time Jay Asher was regarding his treatment of women's issues, slut-shaming, sex positivity, et cetera. this book was published in the 2000s, when it was the norm for even women to hate women (yeah I was kinda tiny then but my favourite band dedicated their breakthrough bop to slut-shaming a competing love interest in 2007 and it was one of the top pop-punk hits of the year, so...I have a pretty good idea). for this male author to dedicate a significant portion of his book to largely female issues, dissect them impartially, refrain from slut-shaming anybody, detailing the impact it had on his protagonist and even acknowledging that even his seemingly perfect male protagonist wasn't immune to the prevalent culture of toxic masculinity was so refreshing. that said, literary rape is a whole other ball game and I don't know how I feel about that.
- some of the tapes felt kinda lazily written and unnecessary? callous driving? really? it's an important issue but it doesn't really add to the story imo
- hannah was a really well-written character. she was flawed and real and so fucking perfect. - it touches on so many beautiful concepts and really offers food for thought, especially if you haven't been exposed to such discussions first hand.
tl;dr a revolutionary, bold and surprisingly feminist piece for its time, but its take on mental illness and suicide was kind of extremely messy? it offers a lot of food for thought and makes for an unexpectedly addictive and even occasionally cathartic read, though. depending on who you are this could either make for a perfect, engaging and life-altering read or wreck you:/
(I will say that if this were written today I'd hate it from the bottom of my heart though)...more
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