These two books had very different styles of writing in my opinion. In Story of a Girl (SG) by Sara Zarr the writing was almost "slow-paced" compared to Stupid Fast (SF) by Geoff Herbach. With SG the reader can hear her thoughts and piece things together on their own, however in SF the reader hears EVERY single thought that Felton is thinking. The two different styles of writing will definitely appeal to two different readers even if the basic bones of the story are the same.
Both novels had the concept in common of very broken down families, but that is what created the story. Without the hardships in the story, I don't think there would have been much driving the story. In SG Deana would have just been an average girl, who went to school, came home, etc. In SF Felton would have been just a regular boy, who had a brother and enjoyed running. There would have been no character development to them.
Also, speaking in terms of authorship, both books were written to span the time of summer which is a key piece to adolescent literature. Summer is often perceived as a time of growth for adolescents so typically adolescent literature is written over the summer time period, as were both of these novels. It was quite challenging for me to read SF because the author has been my teacher for five semesters at MSU now so all I could hear was his voice in my head and I could pick out tricks that he has taught us to use in our own writing.
