Author Ryan Andrews responds at Radix here. Andrews makes the case that his book is really a tragedy and that the real tragic hero is actually Prudence, not Mark.

Given the ideological place from which the book was written, and from which most of the readers come, as well as the framing of the novel’s conflict, I can understand how this might be overlooked. Mark is the white guy. Superficially, he is the actor, while she is acted upon. In the end, the “choice” is in his hands, but she chose him. And the facts on which she based her choice were exactly right, yet she was still somehow wrong.