When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

Sent to Japan for the summer after an eighth-grade classmate's suicide, half-Japanese, half-Jewish Kana Goldberg tries to fit in with relatives she barely knows and reflects on the guilt she feels over the tragedy back home.

When Christian, a boy she knows only through Facebook, posts a lot of nasty comments on her page, fifteen-year-old Lara tries to kill herself--but that is only the beginning of the backlash for her sister, Sydney; her former friend Bree; and her classmates.

Teenager Maxine is determined to scatter her father's ashes at the lighthouse on Shackles Island, off the coast of Louisiana because that is where she has good memories of him; Eli, haunted by the ghost of his older sister, is determined to end his own life where she died, on the rocks under the lighthouse--but neither Max or Eli counted on running into each other, or on Hurricane Celeste which is roaring toward the island.