Subverted in My Mum Tracy Beaker when Cam mentions attending a "ceremony" she went to involving two of her female friends, implying that it was their wedding. Played straight however with Cam seeming to develop a relationship with Miss Oliver, Jess's teacher, implied only through innuendos throughout the story. Played with India in Secrets, who is very intelligent but sometimes veers into Innocently Insensitive behaviour. Some characters are more sympathetic about it than others. In Clean Break Em is reunited with her stepfather but comes to an understanding that things cannot be the same between him and the family again. She even tells her mum that "wishes never come true the way you want." The Alcoholic: Averted in Love Frankie when Frankie's mother falls over in front of all the high school students and they assume she's been drinking. She actually suffers from MS, which affects her muscles, but she asks Frankie not to tell anyone, so everyone continues to think it was caused by drunkenness. Vita – Em's half sister. She has a reindeer puppet called Dancer. She has mousy brown hair and likes to be fashionable. Vita sometimes laughs at poor Em's size, but when a shadow of sadness is cast over their family, she turns to Emily for support, and one lonely night, Em finds poor Vita crying alone in bed, and used her lovely, soft reindeer puppet named Dancer to cheer Vita up.

Maxie - Em's wimpy three-year-old half-brother who was given a set of expensive felt tip pens for Christmas. He does not want to sleep in a proper bed and he hates pyjamas.

Tropes found in her works:

Ambiguous Ending: Em, her mother, brother and sister run downstairs after hearing someone pretending to be Father Christmas, heavily implying that her stepfather Frankie has returned, and with Em stating it will be "the best Christmas ever". In Amber, Amber recounts a story of when she was younger (probably a pre-teen) and attracted the attention of a seemingly nice, much older man outside a chip shop; but he soon made her very uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her. Ellen Jane's mother in Diamond, who insisted on having more and more babies until she got four sons (naming the first three Matthew, Mark and Luke and intending to call the fourth John). She died while giving birth to John, her sixth child. Rebecca casts a 'curse' on a girl she dislikes in Glubbslyme, then feels awful when she twists her ankle and brings has a magical "poppet" to fix it. I Just Want to Be Normal - Barbara in Deep Blue has spent her life training to be an Olympic diving champion, and feels that she has missed out on "normal" experiences as a result. This trope causes her to use a minor accident at the pool as an excuse to quit diving so that she can attend parties and hang out with boys like a regular girl of her age.

Phoebe in The Primrose Railway Children makes up and draws a story about a nineteenth-century family, clearly based upon her own family. The main character Philomena is "breathtakingly beautiful," clever and a favourite with everybody.May–December Romance: Em's grandmother Ellen falls in love with a waiter during a holiday to Spain. Emily runs into her real dad at a fair, and was scared because he had always abused her mother when she was young. India from Secrets is overweight, but also comes top at school despite it being ultra-academic. At the end of the book, she mentions an IQ test she took, where she scored 150.