Harriet Reuter HapgoodRecensioni

I think 'strange' is the best way to describe this book. If I'd been more invested, this could have been strong.

I had to suspend my disbelief about halfway through and I went with the flow instead of trying to wrap my head around what was happening, but perhaps that meant that I got less out of the book because I was rather confused by what had happened at the end. If I'd spent less time being confused, I might have become more invested in this book. I did appreciate that the author tried to mathematically explain all that happened and I loved a certain cannoli analogy, but I didn't understand it enough to buy why it would happen just to her.

I felt that the characters could have been better fleshed out. Sof, for example, had a personality that was a neat idea but only really shone through once. I don't even know who Meg was, though she was fun when stoned. I felt like reading Jason and Thomas talking they could have been the same people. That was a real detriment to the book in my opinion.

Ultimately I think the most important aspect to this was overcoming grief and managing to achieve and accomplish despite. Our main character, Gottie, was an incredibly talented mathematician (physician?) and I appreciated that her talent didn't go unrecognised.

If you really enjoy (or even have a baseline understanding of) math and physics and enjoy YA, this might be for you. But I think I'll have to read this another two times before I'm no longer puzzled.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A gorgeous lyrical book where I have no freaking clue what is going on.

I will admit that much of this went over my head but I still liked reading it. There was a lot of timey whimey ness and some physics and math to try and explain it all, but if I tried to unravel everything my head would start aching. So I stopped trying to figure it out and just let the story carry me along. I think I got most of it, but can't help feeling like there are still pieces I'm missing.

Still, lovely. Grief, as portrayed by wormholes. Love, as exhibited by time paradoxes.

I really loved this, no surprise as I am obsessed with the idea of time travel. Surely I'm not the only person disappointed to find that Holksea isn't a place I can visit (other than via this book)?

Got this as an ARC. Loved it! Reads a little like John Green but with a decidedly female bent. The protagonist is smart but not unrelatable and I can see this really taking off as a big YA of the summer.

Highly recommended.

The Good: It was short, it had illustrations that cut down on the amount I had to read, it did not take place in a dystopian universe.

The Okay: Just about everything else. There was definitely good bones to the story, but the final execution was definitely a miss for me.

Told in the first person, 17 year old Gottie H. Oppenheimer is dealing with the end of the school year and the start of summer. It's been a rough year since her grandfather Grey has passed leaving her alone in her home with her widowed father and their cat. Gottie's older brother Ned has been off at school and when he returns things get shaken up in Gottie's world now that her ex secret boyfriend is back in the mix, and her childhood best friend is now coming back to stay with the family for the summer.

Man, Gottie is so trying. I get that grief is an all encompassing thing. Heck, I lost my father right before I turned 21 and I felt like I was under water for two years afterwards. But I didn't act like I was the only one in pain and or act oblivious to my mother, brothers or sister's grief. Of course people react differently to the same event. But I thought it was a bit much that Gottie obviously didn't get that her father and brother lost Grey and that her father and grandfather also lost her mother. Gottie hits that realization later in the book, but I was all really girl, really when she has those revelations.

I also don't think it helped that Gottie was so focused on Jason (secret boyfriend) for most of the book. And then all of a sudden she wasn't. The entire premise of this book is that Gottie keeps getting thrown back in time to relieve the painful parts of the past year in her life. Jason is a common thread in all of the past events she relieves. Frankly that should have been a big clue to her and the fact that he wanted to keep things secret, he was not the big love of her life. Psst girls, anytime a guy is all let's keep our relationship on the down low, run the other way.

Watching Gottie treat Thomas like an enemy when he first appears while she moons over Jason was a good portion of the book, so enjoy that.

I think the big thing is though that Gottie not only was grieving for her grandfather, she was grieving for the end of her first love. And she was grieving over the end of her first love because she still thought maybe he did love her, and maybe she could have done something differently, etc. I think her pushing away everyone around her was definitely a sign something was up, but I think her father not pushing her one way or the other was weird. I also didn't dig Gottie's other friend who I think is mad that Gottie isn't acting the same way she previously had, so goes off and gets herself another new best friend. Seriously, this whole book was people acting terrible or terribly to each other and no one really discussing it til the end, and then glossing over it.

The only other person that gets developed in this book at all though is Thomas. His character comes shining through and I can see why he and Gottie were best friends and end up rekindling their friendship after a while. But even Thomas has his issues.

Since most of this book deals with Grey I wish that we had more of a understanding of the guy. He seemed like an aging hippie that talked a lot of nonsense. I didn't get the why behind him being special at all. I think if we had more to go than bits and pieces from Gottie's memory and Grey's diary then it would have worked more. Everyone says that Grey was really Gottie and Ned's father since he was the one who took care of them, but I didn't get that at all. And everyone kind of acting like their dad was just there was super odd. I don't know. This whole family and the friends too could be described as quirky which means they are all manic pixie girls/boys/men and I would have run screaming from the room ten minutes after meeting them.

The writing was so-so. I did not get the physics or math parts of this book at all. And the illustrations were cute and diverting. But still, no dice. I have no idea what any of this even meant, and I can see why a lot of people ended up DNFing this book because the physics aspects actually ruins the book. You don't have to make up a mathematical reason why time travel happens. Trying to use math to explain everything happening to Gottie stopped the book each and every time. Probably because none of it made sense and the paradox aspect was a hilarious hand wavey thing that did crack me up.

The chapters counting down to something (you will find out soon enough) got on my nerves too. Don't do things in freaking minutes please, I was sitting there converting things to hours, minutes, and seconds and just stopped after the first few chapters.

The flow as I already said never gets into a groove at all. Things pick up towards the end and then we still have another hump to get past while time fixes itself. I may have been super bah humbug by the time I got to the end of this book.

The setting of this book takes place in England. It took me a while to even figure that out. Or why Gottie speaks German. This book was short on details that I think were pertinent to the plot. I don't know if this was done purposely by the author to show how mixed up Gottie was or what, but it was real annoying trying to follow a time line and get to everyone's backstory in a coherent way.

The ending happens and we even get a hint (before the ending) of what Gottie's future will bring though based on what is happening to her should not have been shown, but whatever, hand wave paradoxes and time travel.

Goodreads Synopsis:
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.

My Review:
I received a copy of this book through netgalley. First thing, I want to say that I absolutely loved this book. I'm confused at why it has mostly three star ratings, but I guess not everyone liked it as much as I did. Margot is a seventeen year old girl who lives with her father, brother, and now childhood friend who never tried to talk to her once he moved away. She used to live with her grandfather too, Grey, but his passing was really tough on everyone and she's still trying to get her life back together almost a year later. Her brother Ned is mostly away at art school but its home during the summer, and his best friend Jason comes around a lot more often than she's like. She's not happy about having him around, although he's her brothers best friend, as they had a secret relationship that ended badly around the time her grandfather died. Honestly she isn't sure what she should be thinking. Worst of all this stranger who looks like her old friend lives in her house now, and although they were close when they were young, it's been five years without so much as a hi, and things are different now. Strange things tart happening hen Margot starts losing time, literally, being thrown back into lifelike visions of her past while simultaneously still moving around and doing things, like she blacks out but instead of her memory being blank, it's a particularly painful memory. She starts learning about the math behind it all, wormholes and black holes and screenwipes and such, sometimes it feels like there's another reality on top of her own changing the outcome of what's happening. She first blames it on her lack of sleep, but it has to be more than that. This book is unlike anything I've read lately and I loved every moment of it. The characters are super realistic despite what's happening to them or should I say her specifically, and I found myself wishing I knew her and her family, especially her grandfather, he seemed like a good guy. The story took turns I never thought would happen, and I didn't expect any of it. I loved the little notes and diagrams added into the story as well. Definitely check it out if you haven't already.
Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

I received a free advanced copy from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book... and at times I was deeply intrigued, at times I was very confused, and most of the time I was underwhelmed...

CAUTION SPOILERS:



It felt like the physics and time travel were just sort of thrown in. I didn't really like the idea that dark matter = bad feelings and bad feeling make holes in the time-space continuum just for this random teen. The characters felt like shells and not fully developed. Even the main character, sometimes it felt like she was on the verge of fleshing her out but then skipped to something else. I didn't mind that the book was confusing to read, I think that was a positive aspect of it.. but more could have been done with the attribute as well. Then the fact that everything wrapped neatly up.... Ugh. I dunno, like I said... I really wanted to like this one! I might still recommend it to my teen readers... I did order a paperback of it for my branch of the library.

Margot (Gottie) Oppenheimer has lost a lot lately. Her mother died soon after her birth. Almost a year ago, her hippie grandfather Grey died and at the same time, her first relationship with Jason ended as well. She's been isolating herself from just about everyone and is just starting to reconnect. Coincidentally, her childhood friend Thomas is returning to live at her house after a falling out with his father. Gottie doesn't know how to feel as the anniversary of her grandfather's death looms and her friend who never wrote her is set to return. Then Gottie notices that she's losing time as she slips into past memories and then returns sometimes hours later with no memory of what she did in the present. What's happening?

Gottie has had an emotional year, spent mostly keeping to herself. She has blocked out her best friend and her family as she does the least possible to avoid thinking about her grandfather and her ex-boyfriend. A few things make her stand out from the typical protagonist. She excels at math and science, which is refreshing. Her father is German, so many German words are bandied about and German recipes are enjoyed. I had to look up some words, but most were apparent in context. Gottie isn't perfect and makes numerous conscious and unconscious mistakes throughout the story. One thing I particularly liked was that she had sex with her ex-boyfriend, but didn't regret it. He was a jerk to keep it a secret from everyone and for the way he treated her after Grey died, but she was in love and doesn't regret her decision. Her relationship with Thomas is sweet and like they picked up where they left off so long ago. After an initial awkwardness, it was easy to get back into their friendship and something more as they caught up.

What I had a problem with is the science aspects. The She hypothesizes that she's going through wormholes to different realities where certain things happened or didn't happen. The different realities thing seemed to come out of nowhere near the end of the novel. Before that, I thought she was just visiting the past, She tries to explain it with math equations and baking metaphors, but none of it really made sense to me. When I stopped trying to make sense of it, I enjoyed it much more. The pictures and equations kind of went over my head because I'm not a math or science person, but it was nice to get a small taste of what Gottie enjoys.

I expected The Square Root of Summer to be a light fluffy summer read, but it deals with realistic things like grief and loss. I thought the ending was a little too tied up, but otherwise enjoyable. I enjoyed the book and felt for Gottie even when she was making some awful decisions. Worth a read.½

Gottie H. Oppenheimer. Margot. I found myself looking back to the beginning and flyleaf of the book, to see if it had been translated from German, yet it took place on the coast of England. Add in a cat named Umlaut and a lot of math, and you will understand while it finally dawned on me that the parts that I thought were poorly translated were in reality, a lot of mathematical and scientific principles trying to be explained to the reader. It's an eccentric romance story, but after I waded through all of the math, time travel and dark matter, I also found a story of huge sadness and grief. I don't want to give much away, but suffice to say, you really just have to keep reading it to understand it.

Gottie thinks "I'm ready to live in the world again, but the world won't let me." p. 204½