 Writing for "The New York Times", author Richard Peck said the novel "is crowded with more incident and empowerment than any eighth-grade year or novel can quite contain" but praised its emotional weight.Augusta Scattergood, reviewing for the "Christian Science Monitor", called the novel "often heartbreaking but always funny" and the audience "will also have discovered something important about the capacity for love and the power of resiliency" by the end of the novel.