Kerr is a very popular writer among young adults because she writes about themes that are current, that address the complexity of life, and that do not offer easy solutions or answers to teenage problems. Gwen Spring tells Suzy in Love Is a Missing Person that "Life isn't answers. It's questions." Kerr's characters ask questions. Mary Kingsbury in an article on Kerr says that she "offers her readers a choice. One takes from these books a genuine sense of the ambiguity of life and the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of pinning down definite answers." There are often familiar patterns that emerge from Kerr's books. The parent-child relationship is often at the center of the tension. She encourages the notion of following one's instincts in those relationships. Another pattern is the balancing of two opposing sets of values, as in Night Kites.

Kerr's style is fast-paced...