Yes well I can imagine if you've spent your childhood reading airport novels books that might expect you to relate to a character on a human level might be a bit rough.
I mean, I didn't much care for The Handmaid's Tale, but my own introversion, along with some experiences in youth that gave me to understand something of how one's mind may behave when deprived of stimulus or opportunity for meaningful interaction, made its viewpoint character's relentless inner focus rather less alien and offputting than I suspect I'd otherwise have found it. Even for me, though, that didn't come anywhere near making it pleasant. For someone who came to it without those traits or experiences that made it at least intuitively understandable, I can easily imagine it being no more than an awful slog - especially when forced to read it for a class assignment, rather than happening upon it organically as I did.
(And I read airport novels as a kid, too, not because they were great, deep, meaningful literature, but because they were a lot of fun! God forfend, I suppose...)
B) slagging off Newbury award winners as a category is slagging off A Wrinkle In Time and them shits fightin' words
C) douche helpfully proves me as being in fact far too charitable by claiming that it is predictably disaster to expect a boy to relate to a story about a girl.
Stephen King on the other hand... besides a few awkward questions with the father about what a screwdriver was, or what the Combat Zone in Boston was... was incredibly readable.