“This is what it means to love someone. This is what it means to grieve someone. It’s a little bit like a black hole. It’s a little bit like infinity.”
Gottie’s grandfather, Grey, died nearly a year ago but the grief is still fresh enough to choke her. She’s spent the past year trying to hide, trying to forget, trying to disappear.
Her father, in his usual absent-minded way, is breezing past the gaping hole in their family without really seeing the damage. Her brother is home from school for the summer and keen to resurrect Grey’s eccentric traditions and remember him. All of which makes Gottie’s guilt and sadness hurt even more.
It’s been hard enough focusing on the day-to-day and the things she’s lost. It gets worse when seemingly impossible wormholes start springing up around Gottie’s small seaside town pulling her to times and memories she’d rather forget. Like the day of Grey’s funeral when her first love, Jason, wouldn’t even hold her hand. Or the day her best friend Thomas moved away leaving Gottie with a scar on her hand and no memory of their parting.
When Jason and Thomas reappear in Gottie’s life, she realizes that some things can’t be forgotten and some memories–even the painful ones–are worth revisiting. The wormholes and the lost time are building to something. Gottie has the rest of the summer to decide if she wants to run toward whatever comes next or keep running away in The Square Root of Summer (2016) by Harriet Reuter Hapgood.
The Square Root of Summer is Reuter Hapgood’s debut novel.
Gottie is an incredibly smart heroine with an affinity for math and science–especially physics. Once she realizes that she is losing time, she begins to work out the science of such an impossibility and try to make sense of it with mathematical equations and the laws of physics.
Reuter Hapgood seamlessly integrates complex science and math concepts into the story as Gottie comes closer to the impossible truth behind the events of her summer. These concepts combined with Gottie’s singular voice make for a dense beginning. As the story unfolds and readers get to know Gottie they are rewarded with a satisfyingly intricate novel that begs to be read closely and repeatedly. The addition of unique text designs, illustrations of certain concepts, and notes from Gottie’s research make for an even more unique reading experience.
While time travel is a pivotal aspect of this story, The Square Root of Summer is a novel about family at its core. Gottie’s family is a adrift in the wake of Grey’s death–lost without their boisterous and unlikely anchor. It is only in revisiting memories of him and his death that Gottie begins to realize that sometimes moving forward is the best way to grieve someone.
The Square Root of Summer is populated with distinctive personalities ranging from Gottie and her family to her eccentric physics professor. While the blackholes lend a sense of urgency to the story, this is a character driven novel with fascinating dynamics–particularly between Gottie and her long-absent friend Thomas.
The Square Root of Summer delivers the best aspects of any time travel story combined with the memorable characters and pathos so often found in great contemporary novels. This genre-defying novel is clever and unique–a breath of fresh air on a warm summer day. Gottie and her story are guaranteed to leave a lasting impression. Highly recommended.
Possible Pairings: Suffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake, A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody, Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore, A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley, Two Summers by Aimee Friedman, In Some Other World, Maybe by Shari Goldhagen, 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder, Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart, Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta, Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith, Pivot Point by Kasie West, Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration*
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