Clean Break

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Lame Pun Reaction - Elsa gets a number of these in The Bed and Breakfast Star; she wants to be a comedian, but all the jokes she knows are incredibly cheesy. She later discovers people find her more entertaining when she's not actively trying to be funny.

Career Versus Family / Career Versus Man - Touched upon a few times in the Girls series. In Girls Out Late, Ellie, Nadine and Magda are upset when they discover that their favourite pop star has given up her career to please her boyfriend. In Girls in Tears, Anna's career is a source of friction between her and Ellie's father; and it's mentioned that Ellie's mother gave up a promising career to raise her daughter.

Tropes:

And Now for Someone Completely Different - Diamond, the fourth in the Hetty Feather series, switches to the perspective of new protagonist Ellen Jane. Does Not Like Men: Jan in Falling Apart is an avowed feminist, dislikes men, and refuses to hang around with boys. When Simon tells Tina he only dated her because of a bet with a friend, he says he was dared to ask out her or Jan but Tina was obviously easier to get. Although they aren't actually related, Hetty and Diamond consider themselves sisters and Hetty is very protective of Diamond.

Astral Projection - Important to the plot of The Other Side, although it's left open to the reader as to whether it's real or just in the heroine's imagination. People assume India from Secrets is this, but she usually averts it, noting that she plays it straight only when defending Anne Frank's diary against the girls in her class.

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Em's favorite author is named Jenna Williams, a play on Jacqueline Wilson herself and her previous novels. Several of Jenna Williams books are mentioned, including: The title character of Amber briefly gets involved with Dave, who's at least twenty years older than she, when she believes she's pregnant and he offers to marry her and raise the baby with her. The relationship ends pretty much instantly when she finds out there is no baby.

Jacqueline Wilson's particular talent is to find a bittersweetness in the dysfunctional families she describes. Her books are both hard and marshmallow-soft. Her stories traverse the gap between childhood's dreams and treats and messy adult realities.Tracy Beaker, and Elsie in Queenie, end up being taken into children's homes because they had been left at home alone by their mothers (although in Elsie's case, she's able to go and live with her grandmother.) 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. Dull Eyes of Unhappiness - In Dustbin Baby, April goes to visit the grave of her adoptive mother, whose headstone has a picture of her on her wedding day. April notes how bright her adoptive mother's eyes are in the picture, and sadly reflects that they didn't look at all like that when April knew her.