Garden fully develops her characters, showing both their strengths and flaws. Nick, for example, can be both a boastful, chauvinistic leader and a tender, respectful friend. Pippa, seemingly unafraid of anything, chokes up when discussing her sister's leukemia and withdraws from people completely after an attack that nearly ended in rape. Kate is not perfect and does not always make the wisest choices. The characters are believable, the situations realistic.

Garden uses figures of speech effectively. For example, she justifies Kate's friendship with a girl who has "thoughts that went deeper than the words of the latest popular song."

Kate, herself, is a writer who tries to organize her thoughts in a poem. There are several appropriate quotations from Shakespeare, including a comparison of Kate Kincaid to Kate in Taming of the Shrew.