[9] It is told in the first person point of view of Fanboy, a 15-year-old boy who maintains an internal, sarcastic and funny commentary throughout the story.

Reviewer Gillian Engberg described Fanboy and Goth Girl as a "realistic, contemporary story of bullying and a teen's private escape.

"[9] Fanboy is obsessed with comics – graphic novels as he corrects Goth Girl – and a sub-plot trip to a "comic-book convention ... feels authentic.

"[11] The book depicts Josh, who is about to graduate high school, dealing with the news that Eve, an attractive female history teacher who manipulated him into a sexual relationship when he was twelve, is soon to be released from prison.

He concludes that even though "the reader never gets much of a fix on her [Eve's] motives", there is an appropriate and palpable discomfort that comes from reading as it "vividly explores the gray areas between love, lust, right and wrong.

The town turns against him, and he engages in a mental and verbal fight with a classmate over the rights and wrongs and simple interpretations and beliefs of what it means to be patriotic.

Set six months after the events of the first novel[13] Goth Girl Rising follows Kyra as she returns home from Maryland Mental Health Unit.