I really enjoyed this. It was a good solid exploration of delving into shame and learning empathy. It could easily have been preachy and trite, but somehow Oliver dodged that. 
 I want to delve into this in more depth at some point. I will just add for now that I removed a star for the male characters. We get all this depth and understanding and empathy for the female characters, no matter how messed up, mean, or peripheral (to the protagonist) they are, but there's not a single male who's a whole person (Love Interest Lad comes closest, but still not quite), and I think that's a shame. If I've learned anything from my son, it's that boys are as complicated as girls. In a book about empathy and learning other people's stories, I think an opportunity was missed.