** spoiler alert ** 
 Fascinating to see the divergence of opinion on this one. Love it or loathe it, but it doesn't seem like the sort of book you have a half-hearted reaction to... great! 
 So, the opening act with Freddie Horvath turned my stomach. I thought of all the times I had done stupid things just like Jack in my teenage years. It gave me chills I tell you. 
 Similarly the repetition - the roll... tap tap tap "Freddie Horvath did something to my brain" & "fuck you, Jack" (and Jack's occasional references to himself in the third person) were all disturbing and powerful in their own way. Listening to Roll taptaptap late at night, not knowing what it meant made the hairs stand up on the nape of my neck. 
 Conner is an interesting young man. I have to disagree with other reviews saying that this book bashes people over the head with a 'gay is bad' message. They do tend to call each other gay, interestingly neither denies it that I can recall. This is not to say that I find it acceptable for anyone to call each other gay in a derogatory way or be generally obnoxious about diverse lifestyles - I will and have in the past confronted people on just this issue - but this writer is writing kids rather well, and it seems like one of the scariest things at that age is sexuality. 
 I have a pet theory that Conner is in love with Jack. I don't buy it with Rachel at all. I do buy that Jack thinks he's in love with Nickie, even though I thought Nickie was a particularly weak character: Mary-Sue alert! I don't know why the girls are there. Maybe it'll become clear in Passenger, but seeing as at least one of them can't even see Marbury it just seems like an insipid love story. Not that all the love stories in this book were that way: Seth's tale about his love for Hannah was breathtaking and heartbreaking. That whole part of the story was fantastic. 
 I loved the Marbury portion of the novel, I was constantly wanting to get back there as badly as Jack. I wanted to know more about the place, about Ben, Griffin and Seth and about what would happen with Conner. 
 I liked where the novel ended. You could conceivably read this as a stand-alone without too much angst, but there's enough of a pull to make you want to read Passenger. Personally, I have so many questions left from this book there's no question of me reading the next - I have to!