I thought the characters were well-written. There were only a couple of main characters in the book, Hannah and Clay. They both felt like distinct people with different characteristics. I thought Hannah was kind of petty with the tapes and Clay was annoying with the whole "but what did I do - this isn't fair" attitude. But I think that is good writing because you can really get a feel for the characters and their personalities.

The book didn't give me as much of an impact on the topic as I felt the show did. But I still thought there were a lot of good representations of the topic in the book. It made me think about life and how what you see of people isn't always what is on the inside.