Reveiw:Playlist For The Dead

Title:Playlist For The Dead
Author: Michelle Falkoff
A teenage boy tries to understand his best friend's suicide by listening to the playlist of songs he left behind in this smart, voice-driven debut novel.


Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand.

As he listens to song after song, Sam tries 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 that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.

Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now, Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.

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Sam has just lost his best friend Hayden to suicide and is trying to come to terms with it in his own way. Hayden was pretty much Sams only friend and with Hayden gone Sams left angry,alone and grieving.Now faced with moving on Sam figuring out who he is on his own and actually getting to know people around him.What I liked about Playlist for the Dead was how authentic it felt.Sam was a relate-able character whos wry humor shone though. .The romance part of the story threw me for a loop and is unconventional, given the timing, but then again one has to consider that this could also be something that is unique to this story. What was nice was that the romance part happen naturally and didn't feel fake and that end result for Sam and Astrid was perfectly bitter sweet.

The different characters were all interesting in the own way ,but my favorite character was not Sam but his sisters boyfriend Jimmy.His appearances were brief but Falkoff wrote the scenes with Jimmy talking to Sam about grief and moving on in such a raw honest way.In the end it was nice that any loose and for the characters was all tied up but there was still a bit of open endless like you could be hopeful for them

The cover is simple but eye catching all at the same time.I really like the silhouette of two people sharing ear buds. While at first I was unsure about Playlist for the dead because on occasion it dragged a bit for me,i would probably  reread this book at some point.For readers looking for a thought-provoking, but kinda  depressing read,with a playlist of awesome songs I would recommend this book.4/5