Being a middle-aged Hispanic male, I am probably not the intended audience of this film, based on a popular young adult book, but I watched it anyway and was surprised how engaging it was until the twist in the middle of the movie and then it kind of dwindled after that. It seemed the main character waffled back and forth about her true feelings. Perhaps she was confused about her future but I don't think the lead actress was good enough for the audience to feel sympathetic towards her dilemma. I guess being at an age where I could be the characters' father, I was amazed at the lack of Latino men in positive role models. For the two main characters, there was no father, uncle, cousin, no man who espoused constructive ideas. Instead, we get gangbangers who abuse their own women. Okay, maybe that's the way it is in this society but in order to have drama, you need conflict between competing ideas. None of that was shown which shows the difference between this film and the mid-90s Allison Anders' film, 'Mi Vida Loca' with its similar theme.