I feel like Van Drannen would portray herself, in a way, as Juli, one of the main characters in Flipped. They both share the similar side of having a crush on a boy they didn't really know. It took both of them a while to see that side of Bryce, the other main character in the book. Or more so, a guy like Bryce on Van Drannen's part. I don't think that she wrote this book to tell you more about how you should see the person that you like or how guys are. I think that she wrote this book as a way to show you the way that guys seem to play themselves out as.