The book was written right after the release of "Some kind of wonderful" and David Bischoff follows the story very closely to the movie plot, often taking dialogues directly from the movie, word by word. The dialogues, however, lose their edge because the author omits "inappropriate" language. For instance, at the beginning of the movie Duncan asks Watts how long has she been a lesbian. In his book, however, D. Bischoff translates that into " How long have you been a tomboy?" and the rest of Duncan's dialogue with Watts (right before the fight broke out) is omitted. This trend is followed carefully throughout a book, which appears to be geared toward middle school kids.
Most of the time, D. Bischoff stays true to the story. He also added some scenes that were not in the movie, such as Watts telling Keith at the end that he will have to return diamond earrings he just gave her because he needs the money to go to art school.
Overall, if you love the movie you will probably like the book. In my opinion, reading the production script would have been much more interesting, but alas it is not available.
