[quote=@Cynder]
Can anyone explain the appeal of "Thirteen Reasons Why" to me (either the Netflix series and/or the book)? I've been hearing about it lately and I've been wondering what exactly the hype over it is. 
[/quote]

i very much enjoyed it, though the premise is kinda on the "eh" side of things. essentially, without revealing too much, it's about a teenage girl, hannah baker, who committed suicide, then blamed said suicide on a group of students and a faculty member at the school. there's thirteen tapes, which each contain a reason why she killed herself, and she forces each person on the tapes to listen to them all, then pass them along to the next person (the way she does this is with the threat that, if they don't follow the rules, she "hired" a person to reveal the tapes - and the students' wrongdoings - publicly). the protagonist of the show, clay jensen, spends a lot of his time getting revenge on the students as he goes down the list, despite the fact that the only reason he's listening is because [i]he's on the tapes too[/i].

apart from the questionable plot line, the show features graphic scenes of rape and even explicitly shows hannah's suicide, really batting home the point of how unglamorous things like these are and how much it affects not only the victim, but everyone else involved. it's stirred up a lot of controversy due to this, which is probably why there's such a buzz. that, and the fact that it's attracted basically every teenage tumblr and twitter user.

oh, there's also a love story somewhere in there. it's essentially life is strange: the tv show, if you ask me.