For Sam—listen and you’ll understand.
This is the note that Sam finds in his best friend Hayden’s bedroom the morning after the biggest fight they’ve ever had. It’s attached to a zip drive with a playlist of songs. It’s Hayden’s suicide note.
Desperate for answers, Sam has to rely on the playlist and his own memory. But the more he listens, the more he realizes that his memory isn’t as reliable as he thought.
Sam knows he has to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it’s only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him—including an eccentric, unpredictable girl with secrets of her own—that Sam will finally be able to piece together his best friends story.
And maybe have a change to change his.
Title: Playlist For The Dead
Author: Michelle Falkoff
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Imprint: Harper Teen
ISBN: 978-0-06-231051-4
Release Date: January 27, 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult, Realistic Fiction
Pages: 279
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
SPOILER ALERT. THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Well, that’s over with. My thoughts right after I finished reading this book were: “No rating yet, I need to sort out my feelings for this book first”. It left me pretty confused.
I (mostly) liked this book. It was an interesting story, and I was pretty surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did—considering that this is a topic which I don’t really like and try to avoid. One thing I did feel throughout this story was that there wasn’t really a backstory to what happened. It was also very unclear to me what the real (or major) reason for Hayden’s suicide was.
The characters were okay; some were more enjoyable than others. Sam was great; I really liked his personality and related to him quite a bit. I liked that he was a good kid, quiet and introverted. Astrid was pretty good until THAT happened; I liked that she was kind of drawing Adam out of his shell a bit, helping him meet new people and get to know the world, but then she had to go and do THAT and ruin everything. I also liked Sam’s family and Astrid’s friends a lot. I didn’t really like Hayden (or his family) all that much from what we were told; I wish we wouldn’t be gotten a bit more from him…
One thing that I hated was that Astrid was the one behind the attacks of The Bully Trifecta, because I really liked her. And I loved her with Sam. But then we found out that it was her all along, and everything just kind of went down the drain from there.
Another thing that I hated (very, very much) were the hallucinations that Sam was having. I do not like horror/terror/thriller stories, and to me that was all of that. They really were horrible for me to read, especially when I was alone. I just didn’t like them at all.
I liked the writing style of the author. It kind of had a poetic vibe to it sometimes, although, unfortunately, I don’t think I want to read more of her books. Maybe one day further along the line I’ll try one again, but for now I think that was enough.
Overall, this book was okay. It was an… interesting experience. I’m not exactly sure whom I’d recommend this book to, but it does cover some heavy subjects like suicide and bullying, so keep that in mind. I also read this book because I’ve really been debating on whether or not to read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, and I was told that this was a similar story, but less intense, which was good. So, maybe I’ll read that sometime in the future.
Book Pebbles 