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The Square Root of Summer

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The Square Root of Summer

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Overview

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 H. Oppenheimer is losing time. Literally. When the fabric of the universe around her seaside town begins to fray, she's hurtled through wormholes to her past:

To last summer, when her grandfather Grey died. To the afternoon she fell in love with Jason, who wouldn't even hold her hand at the funeral. To the day her best friend Thomas moved away and left her behind with a scar on her hand and a black hole in her memory.

Although Grey is still gone, Jason and Thomas are back, and Gottie's past, present, and future are about to collide—and someone's heart is about to be broken.

With time travel, quantum physics, and sweeping romance, The Square Root of Summer is an exponentially enthralling story about love, loss, and trying to figure it all out, from stunning debut YA voice, Harriet Reuter Hapgood.

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626723733
Publisher:	Roaring Brook Press
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	HL690L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Harriet Reuter Hapgood is a freelance journalist who has worked with Marie Claire, ELLE, and InStyle in the U.K. Her debut novel, The Square Root of Summer, was inspired by her German mathematician grandfather and her lifelong obsession with YA romance, which includes a thesis on Dawson's Creek, part of her dissertation on romantic comedies at Newcastle University. She lives in Nottingham, England.

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Editorial Reviews

This is a novel for readers unafraid of science. There's talk of fractals, wormholes, black holes, the Gödel metric…Schrödinger's cat, string theory. Physics provides metaphors for loss, confusion and love. But there's humor, too…the delectable romance and the moment when past, present and future all come together and semi-solve the mysteries of Gottie's time travel make the journey worthwhile.

The New York Times Book Review - Marjorie Ingall

A Teen Vogue Best New Book of 2016
"Sophisticated and believable. . . An emotional roller-coaster ride worth taking." -School Library Journal, starred review
"A story of complex grief, love, and growth." -Kirkus

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2016
Gr 8 Up—This debut novel is a love story involving the chaos of loss, grief, and guilt. Seventeen-year-old Gottie has spent the entire school year living in a shroud of mourning. The end of the previous summer brought the death of grandfather Grey, who practically raised her after her mother died. Jason, her first love, left for college shortly after the funeral without a word of goodbye, along with her brother. Alone with her grieving father, Gottie retreated inside herself, refusing to communicate with anyone. Now, with the start of another summer vacation, her brother and Jason are back, and the best friend who disappeared from her life five years ago has suddenly returned. All during her childhood, Thomas and Gottie were inseparable, but when they were 12, Thomas's family moved away. She still harbors resentment over his failure to keep in touch. Her unbearable grief, guilt over a wish she fears may have hastened her grandfather's death, and the reappearance of people who she feels once abandoned her catapults Gottie into time (and mind) bending episodes of both reliving and reinventing the past. As the anniversary of Grey's death approaches, Gottie fears she may be forced to relive the worst day of her life. Almost identical in theme to Heather Sappenfield's Life at the Speed of Us (Flux, 2016), this work takes a more sophisticated and believable approach to integrating space/time anomalies into the story line. VERDICT An emotional roller-coaster ride worth taking.—Cary Frostick, formerly at Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA

School Library Journal

2016-02-02
Love, loss, and unpredictable two-way wormholes haunt Gottie in this bildungsroman. Gottie's first loss, at age 12, was her best friend, who moved away and never wrote. Her second was her beloved grandfather, immediately followed by the third, when her first love distanced himself from her. One summer later, Gottie's grief hasn't lessened, and she's experiencing strange things—the world "screenwipes," only to drop her off in various moments in the past. A math prodigy, Gottie seeks to explain what's happening in terms of physics and numbers, but mounting evidence that she can't ignore—especially what happens when both her old friend and her ex-love return to her life—points to a relationship between grief and the breaks in reality. Some readers may be confused by the narrative's leaps among timelines and alternate realities—especially as Gottie is accepting of the wormholes, keeping them secret and stoically rolling with the punches—but the robust web of relationships and multidimensional secondary characters provide anchors. While Gottie learns a lot—not just physics, but also about people and life—her revelations come as slow developments instead of didactic lessons. The pacing ranges from slow to jerky, as time itself changes, looping and intersecting until finally artfully converging. A story of complex grief, love, and growth, best for intellectual romantics. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

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