Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Depressing
Reading this book makes us want to cry. Literally. We're talking buckets of tears. It's not just that it's about super sad topics like drunk driving and teen suicide; it's also the way it's written. Death doesn't pop out of nowhere in this book, it haunts it through the book's depressing tone. Almost all of the characters deal with huge emotions in some way, and it seems like no one in the book can escape from immense pain and heavy emotions.
In fact, when their English teacher asks them what Macbeth means, B.J. says:
Life is short, and then you die. And on top of that, life don't really mean nothin' anyway. But I think the only reason that he was so depressed was because he had been the cause of so much death that he couldn't find nothin' else good about livin'. (23.14)
Macbeth is dark and all, but this is a seriously grim reading—way to bring us down, B.J. This negative outlook crops up a lot of places in the book. But then again, the story is practically bookended by death, so we're not really sure what else we could've expected.