This book pushed every one of my buttons. The main character was a navel gazer, it was set in the past for no reason other than that the author appears to not want to deal with technology (it's the 80's and the two teen main characters don't even watch tv on principle), the two main characters fall in love but there is no hint of romance for 80% of the book, there's family drama that never gets resolved, there is a serious lack of female characters except for two girls who only show up to be obnoxious and then disappear just as quickly as they appeared, and the two main characters, despite being 15 year old boys, speak like sixty year old philosophers.

I called a friend who loved this book and asked him to explain it to me when I was a third of the way through. He told me all of his feelings and I tried so hard to keep them in mind while listening, but this was just a dull mess from start to finish.