I glanced at that novel a while ago in Amazon and discarded it (I generally can't stand young-adult fictions) and now I'm glad I did it.
I still can't believe how certain writers are not ashamed to use certain scheme (and don't let me started on the whole mental health issues) >.<.
As for the research part, I'm afraid to say that most of the writers/writers-to-be I know consider enough research looking at wikipedia and the rest is a waste of time (I just had a discussion about it on a literary blog this morning).