The Square Root of Summer – Harriet Reuter Hapgood (A Review)

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.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for sending me this book for review!

I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. It intrigued me from the first page, and by the time I was nearing the end I didn’t want to put it down.

I’m not really a mathematics person, so all the maths fuddled me slightly. Also with all the science! So many scientific theories, and so many big ideas that I hadn’t heard off/had no idea how they worked! This confused me and gave me a bit of a headache. It’s easily looked past though, and it’s still fun to enjoy Gottie’s flashbacks (? yeah, let’s call them that).

So while I’m not too sure of what happened and why these things were happening to Gottie, it was still an enjoyable read. I like how it represented the different types of grief people go through, and that everyone deals with death and difficult situations differently.

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to rate this book. One half of me wants to go with a solid 4, and the other half thinks maybe a three. So I’m going in between, and it’s a 3.5 stars from me! When this is released in paperback form I’ll definitely be buying a copy and having a re-read. Maybe all the science-y stuff will make sense second time round.

P.S: this book is very beautifully written. I love the writing style, it flowed so well. Plus the little illustrations were cute.

You can also view this review on Goodreads!