Oh, I so wanted to like this. But Fred and Ryan just didn't sell themselves as real characters to me. Both are a little on the passive side, and their relationship is devoid of tangible chemistry. As well, trying to focus on both their troublesome parental issues resulted in neither being fully developed. The side characters ranged from great (Yolanda and the other girls from the rez) to absurd, like Ryan's friend Seth, whose main purpose seems to be to shower hate on Fred with an implausible reason behind his prejudice. And the big problem I have with this is that his racist behaviour is never really dealt with, head-on. After Seth does some serious over-the-top racist stuff, he cries, he's made to seem like a loser, he basically hits rock bottom. But nobody, not even Ryan, addresses his prejudice like "Yo, buddy, racism isn't right." Instead Ryan mutters "Shut up, don't call her Pocahontas" and leaves it at that. To me, that avoids the main source of conflict to the whole book, and more importantly doesn't present the racism as something solvable. We don't need everyone to become all accepting and open-minded, but the theme topic deserves to be dealt with directly.