Since Ness is clearly poking fun at many of the tropes of YA fiction, I found it hard to take him seriously about his own characters. He's clearly mocking the "indie kids" throughout the whole book, but since he asserts by the end that the main characters and the indie kids are basically the same, I kinda felt like he was mocking the "normal kids" and their cliche feelings about the end of high school, graduation, the future, etc. 
 Quick read and not bad overall, but I had a hard time getting into the story, and the characters especially.