Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Serious, Curious, and a Little on the Dark Side
Given that this book is, on its most fundamental level, about Torey's shift from self-absorbed popular dude to thoughtful and totally righteous ally to all misfits great and small, it makes sense that there'd be some darkness to the tone in this one. After all, Torey doesn't just wake up one morning and reject the comforts of popularity for the heck of it—it's something that happens as his eyes open up to just how cruel the underpinnings of his social status are, which is a pretty dark thing to become aware of. Check this out:
I felt some deep canyon of regret that I […] could never see that he was a tortured person. (21.16)
Nothing's darker than a deep canyon, Shmoopers, both literally and figuratively, and the same is true about tortured people. And that Torey, as our narrator, shares this with us shows just how seriously he takes the problem at hand, a seriousness that his self-imposed rejection of popularity only underlines further.
The thing about Torey's transformation, though, is that it's only possible because of how curious he is. This is a kid with a serious fondness for thinking things through—some might even say overthinking, but we're not ones to judge—which means that curiosity is part of the tone in this book as well. Torey desperately wants to understand, whether he's trying to figure out why Jesus is always depicted wearing a loincloth or what the heck's happened to Chris Creed. He turns this inward on himself, too, enabling him to realize his own culpability in Chris's disappearance.