One of narrative features or characteristics most immediately brought to mind in concern to ‘Someone like you’, as well as various of the other Dessen novels, is that exceptionality of the situational realism that Dessen manages to integrate into her narratives. Primarily first person narratives, Dessen has been invariably known for comprising stories that adolescent and teen girls tend to relate to upon the pretext of most of her plots being derived from real life situations.

Take into consideration, for instance, the case ‘Someone like you’, a story based around the lives of two young girls, Halley and Scarlett, who have been the best of friends for years, sharing secrets, clothes, and crushes. And while Scarlett is the one who society initially views as the typical extrovert, Dessen skillfully relates a deterioration of this in order to emphasize the extent of her later demise.

Dessen employs the shift of balance from Scarlett to Halley, as a result of the formers discovery that she is pregnant with the child her now-dead boyfriend, order to build upon the significantly debilitative impact that the discovery (of her pregnancy) has upon Scarlett as a result of her upbringing and society.

And while this plot quite sufficiently illustrates the turbulence so common to adolescence and post-adolescence, Dessen simultaneously uses Halley’s character and predicament (s) to highlight some of the more typical issues that girls of the age tend to encounter within their social parameters. Adolescent girls will readily identify with Halley and will appreciate the book's honest explication of the things they really want to know.

It would be conclusively apt, moreover, to acknowledge that, speaking from a literary point of view, it is apparent that Dessen has attained a degree of literary efficacy that is especially effectual as a result of its ideological borrowings from within the fabric of contemporary society.