Once upon a time, I secretly loved math. I was good at it. And just last month, I wished I had kept up some of my skills, particularly in geometry. It would have served me well in revising my work-in-progress. Here was my problem:

If Linc walks 504 feet along the perimeter of a circle with a circumference of 1800 feet, to get from his house to his neighbor’s, how many fewer feet will he travel if he cuts straight across the circle?

I turned to Facebook friends and got an answer, but I wished one of my real life friends was Lucy Callahan, aka, Lightning Girl in The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty. Lucy’s skills would have been useful, yes, but despite her extreme quirks, Lucy could become one of those true friends you never knew you wanted.

She doesn’t start out that way. At 8 years old, Lucy was struck by lightning, which stilled her heart for 2.5 to 5 minutes (she hates that no one knows the exact number). It also left her with acquired savant syndrome, which, in practical terms, means she is a math super genius. Her OCD and anxiety, however, have kept her lagging, socially. Now at 12, she wants to leap from homeschool to college. While she may be academically ready, her grandma (and guardian) insists that, first, she go to middle school. If, in 1 year there, she can make 1 friend, join 1 activity, and read 1 non-math book, she can skip straight to college.*

Sounds easy. When you understand advanced calculus, how hard can middle school be, right? But while math is a constant, which subscribes to unchanging rules and predictable outcomes, middle school is not. Lucy finds it hard and sometimes heartbreaking to navigate 7th grade. Her experience involves Windy, maybe her 1 friend?; Levi, a real irritation; and a school service project that may take Lucy far from her small comfort zone but allows her to find the right equation for her life.

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, released only two days ago, is one of those books that people — girls and boys, math kids and non-math kids — will be talking about. The events, reactions, and emotions are so universal, you’ll feel all the feelings that Stacy McAnulty, in her middle grade debut, wants you to experience. And that adds up to a story and a character that may long stay with you.

A note about this review: The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl came onto my radar thanks to Stacy’s agent (not mine, by the way) and a yummy Christmastime breakfast. Soon after, I received the ARC from Stacy’s editor at Random House, but I was neither asked to write this nor compensated for this. I choose to bring you only books I happen to love.

*The numerals in this paragraph are not my normal style; they are a nod to the way Lucy sees the world.