The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl

This book was a sweet story about a girl trying to find her place in the world. It reflects anxieties all middle school kids have about fitting in and making friends.

Yet there were a couple things I didn't like (spoilers!):
1. Lucy makes some mathematical errors when calculating the expected time of dog pickup (e.g., the gambler's fallacy and not considering it as a Poisson process). This could be excused for a normal character, but as an alleged “genius” that solves a Putnam problem in 5 minutes it seems unlikely she would make such errors.
2. The plot with the dog getting cancer felt contrived to manipulate the emotions of the reader. I would have rather focused on feeling emotions towards the main human characters, but this kind of overshadowed anything they did. Also, the resolution was not really satisfying, as it felt very deus ex machina as well as thinking of all the suffering the new owner will have to endure just to assuage some child's guilt.