While he struggles with harassment at school and two potential boyfriends, he has to decide if he will hide his sexual orientation in order to win a statewide essay-writing contest.

[2] Booklist added the novel to its Rainbow List 2010, a bibliography of young adult books which include significant LGBT content.

That makes it a very modern secret, like knowing your favorite celebrity has some weird eccentricity or other, or professional athletes do it for the money, or politicians don't actually have your best interests at heart.

In another flashback, Sprout reveals that he has trouble fitting in at his new school due to his New York accent, odd way of dressing, poverty, and lack of a mother.

[6] Sprout reveals that he and Ian continue to engage in sexual conduct on-and-off for the next four years, but that he desires an actual relationship.

At the end of Sprout's sophomore year, he meets Mrs. Miller, who teaches English grammar and literature at the high school.

Shortly after the start of his junior year, Sprout meets Ty Petit, a local Kansas boy whose father is a violent man who appears to believe in the Christian Patriot movement.

The Petit children were abandoned by their mother, which has left Ty with severe emotional issues—made worse by his father's constant child abuse.

"[4] A review in The Horn Book Magazine was equally positive: "Structurally effective, caustically entertaining, unpreachy, and thought-provoking, Sprout is a satisfying look at the truths one young man unearths about himself.

"[7] Daniel Kraus, writing in Booklist, lauded the way that the author handles the movement of characters like Ruthie, Ian, Mrs. Miller, and Ty in and out of the story, calling this "both absorbing and jarring.

The lengthy, leisurely chapters allow readers to live through the characters rather than view them as mere plot pushers, and the result is a story rarely content to move in conventional directions.

"[10] School Library Journal also found flaws in the novel, concluding that the adult characters were not realistic and that some passages in the novel bordered on the sexually crude.

A review in Melbourne, Australia's The Age newspaper concluded: "Queer teen fiction is flourishing, and the strength of Dale Peck's protagonist—sardonic, intellectually curious and impossibly sure of his identity—makes Sprout one of the more winning examples of it.

"[11] However, reviewer Vicky Edwards in Adelaide's Sunday Mail found the extensive vocabulary daunting, the plot slow, and the conclusion rushed.