This book started off with great possibility, then slowed to a crawl. In the end it became nothing more than an advertisement for abstinence until marriage. The characters had external quirks and lots of them (some very annoying, like the overweight black woman who ends almost every sentence with "uh-huh") but their inner lives were flat, uni-dimensional, caricatures of godly Christians. The biggest conflict in the book was the narrator arguing himself out of more than a few kisses with his new girlfriend (who of course thanks him for really respecting her enough not to kiss her). Unless you are a Christian fundamentalist who opposes anything that might challenge your world view you can do much better than this.