The Square Root of Summer

by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

Gottie Oppenheimer, a seventeen-year-old physics prodigy, navigates grief, love, and disruptions in the space-time continuum in one very eventful summer.

• ISBN10: 1626723737
• ISBN13: 9781626723733
• Publish Date: 3 May 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 September 2021
• Imprint: Roaring Brook Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Kait ✨]

The Square Root of Summer was a fun and breezy summer read. The word “light” comes to mind, but it isn’t, in fact, a very light book: Gottie is coming to terms with the death of her grandfather Grey, her breakup with her secret boyfriend (the best friend of her older brother), the loss of her best friend who moved away five years previously, and tangentially the death of her mother, who died at Gottie’s birth. That’s a lot for anyone to handle!

Gottie’s a math/physics prodigy, so she comes to terms with all this drama through math and a theory she develops about time travel. The New York Times says,

This is a novel for readers unafraid of science. There’s talk of fractals, wormholes, black holes, the Gödel metric (“a solution to the E=MC² equation that ‘proves’ the past still exists”), Schrödinger’s cat, string theory. Physics provides metaphors for loss, confusion and love. But there’s humor, too, including terrible band names (Gottie’s brother is a glam rocker) worthy of “The Haters”: Fingerband, Synthmoan de Beauvoir, Jurassic Parkas. There are funny German words and delicious baked goods and crazy ­outfits.

It’s not only a book for science geeks though—I am definitively not a math or science person, at least not anymore, and I found the concepts Gottie talks about easy enough to grasp. It adds a bit of flavour to an otherwise fairly stereotypical and trope-y YA read.

Ultimately, if you are looking for something summery and contemporary with a bit of heart, this will fit the bill. Otherwise, it’s not a particularly unique or riveting read.

P.S. Just had to add Harriet’s answer to this question from her website (I love the way she captures the spirit of summer. The Square Root of Summer does this, too):

What is the square root of summer?
Hot skin and cool sea water. Mr Whippy 99s and bare feet on sun-browned grass. Cider and freckles and my cat, flipping over and over in a patch of sun by the window. Jasmine and honeysuckle in the garden, falling in love, reading books in trees and trailing home after dark in days that last twice as long as forever. Friends.

I hate giving this book two stars, but it really was just okay for me. The writing, while pretty, failed to engage me. The included physics elements were confusing and the many German words/expressions grew tedious (I want to on say almost every page). On top of that, the characters were so quirky and depressed (for good reason, but still), I didn't connect with any of them. Even the premise of a girl slipping in and out a time to relive key moments in her life never really delivered. Yes, she does go back and forth between the past and present, but, like I said, it was confusing and I kept waiting for the emotional impact to hit me and it just didn't.

This book could have been wonderful, but every element fell short for me, which carried the whole thing down to just okay.

[Kelly]

Serious eye twitching and brain ache.
Far too confusing.
DNF unfortunately.

[Bianca]

The answer’s yes, obviously.
But I think you already know that.
Hasn’t it always been yes when it comes to us?

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: Part of me enjoyed The Square Root of Summer while part of me felt conflicted. The winding chronology gave the book such an odd pacing and that made me feel rather distant. At the same time, it's a stylistic choice of narration than captured the off-kilter summer Gottiewent through. There's so much to this book that I'm still trying to grapple with before I write my review proper.

[Leah]

I have literally just finished The Square Root of Summer and, to tell you the truth, my mind is boggled. If you asked me to type my feelings right this second, this is what you'd get: aheitrsojfkdsjsfko. Gobbledegook. I'm not ashamed to say this book baffled the living daylights out of me, and I would absolutely love somebody to explain to me what caused Gottie to move through wormholes, akin to something I'm used to seeing in The Flash. And that makes me sad, because if Harriet Reuter Hapgood had explained what went on in layman's terms, all would have been well and I would have loved this book. Instead, I feel dazed and confused, as if I've gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson.

As a young adult summer romance, this was an amazing read. I loved Gottie, and I loved Thomas, and Gottie's brother, Ned, and her papa, and it sounded like an idyllic a summer as you can imagine, when you've gone through what Gottie's gone through. The writing was gorgeous, and I could imagine the scenes so vividly, and if this hadn't boggled my mind with the physics, this would have been a book that made me sigh with happiness, instead of one that left me feeling confused and mildly stupid (I HATE when a book makes me feel stupid, sob).

The Square Root of Summer is one of those books that will leave a lot of readers confused - thankfully, I will not be the only one. But if you excuse the confusing bits, this is actually a really lovely story of someone trying to get through her grief, and I really just wanted to give Gottie the biggest hug. This was such a cute read, and there's not a lot else I can say really. I wish I could, but my mind is just scrambled right now. So I'm going to think on it and see if it makes any sense, or if I'll just end up making it worse. Where's a real life Sheldon Cooper when you need one, eh? One thing's for sure I will be re-reading this book, because maybe, just maybe, it will make sense second time around!

[Jo]

4.5 stars.

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I picked up The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood, but a contemporary sci-fi romance full of wormholes and accidental time travel most definitely wasn't it! This is a fantastic book, such a unique idea, and I absolutely loved it!

It's almost a year since the death of Grey, Gottie's grandfather, and Gottie is still grieving. And the boy she fell in love with dropped her without warning, leaving her to deal with Grey's death on her own. She's lost and alone in her grief, barely participating in the world. The only thing that keeps her going are the numbers that make sense to her; equations and physics. But then Thomas, the best friend who used to live next door, comes back into her life, and the remembered heartbreak and sudden return of Thomas adds further unhappiness to her life. He left her, and never wrote, and now he wants to be friends? Isn't Gottie dealing with enough, without Thomas' reappearance? But then things start going strange, when time jumps and she's taken back to last summer, only to return hours later. Gottie needs to find out what's going on, why wormholes are turning up wherever she goes, and why they keep taking her back to a summer before her world crashed, before she does something in the past she can't undo.

Oh my god, this book is incredible! The sci-fi wormhole parts of the book. Wow. They are so clever! By the end of the book, I think I just about understood what was happening, what Gottie's theories actually meant, once Gottie managed to figure out what was going on. But some of the time, it went over my head a little. The book is full of wormholes and physics and theories on time! That wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff is quite complicated, and Reuter Hapgood has made it as accessible as possible, but the problem is my difficulty to get my head around this kind of thing in general. It's only because I watch Doctor Who and have seen a few Brian Cox programmes that I was able to get the gist of what was happening most of the time, but do not ask me to explain any of it to you, because I'm simply unable to. Some parts of it, some of Gottie's theories, were harder to get my head round than others, and I was completely lost, but over all, it was awesome trying to get my head round what was happening, but also trying to figure out why, and what Gottie was supposed to do. I found this element so awesome and exciting, and wonderful! I absolutely loved it!

One of my favourite parts of The Square Root of Summer was Gottie's relationship with her Grey. Gottie is full of grief over the death of Grey, and even almost a year since his death, she's still carrying that heavy grief with her. Not only is she finding it hard to live without this man who helped bring her up, but she's also suffering from guilt over something she did the day he died. Grey was a fantastic character in general, and it's such a shame he was dead, because I would have loved to have seen more of him. The glimpses we saw in flashbacks and through the wormholes weren't enough, but yet had me falling in love with this eccentric hippie who called his granddaughter "dude". He was such a great character, and Gottie's love for him and pain over his death are palpable.

The romance didn't work as well for me as I would have liked. There seems to be more focus for Gottie on the wormholes than her present day friendship/possibly-something-more with Thomas, and so I had difficulty feeling it. I didn't feel we really got to know Thomas all that well. All I really know about him was he loves to bake and wanted his own bakery one day. Gottie talks a lot about how he's different from the boy she knew, but I don't feel I really got to know either version of the boy that well. I wasn't really that emotionally invested, so I wasn't too bothered by what the outcome might be.

But that's ok, because the rest of the book was just so brilliant! It's such a fantastic, unique story that had me completely gripped! I'm sure fans of Doctor Who and The Big Bang Theory will love this story full of grief, romance, science and time travel!

Thank you to Macmillan Children's Books for the proof.