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The Square Root of Summer | May 25, 2016

by Harriet Reuter Hapgood (Roaring Brook/Macmillan, May 2016)

After her grandfather dies, Gottie H. Oppenheimer starts to lose time. One minute she’ll be in the present, trying to endure her first summer without Grey and navigating awkward encounters with her secret ex-boyfriend who just happens to be her older brother’s best friend. The next minute, she’s reliving key moments from her past that seem to be leading to something specific: the day Grey died; a day she doesn’t think she’ll survive reliving.

Gottie, a quantum physics enthusiast, is sure that wormholes are at the source of her sudden ability to time travel, and she’s determined to figure out exactly how the science works. But things become more complicated when Thomas, her childhood best friend to whom she hasn’t spoken in years, suddenly returns and won’t stop mentioning an email that she has no memory of sending. As she hurtles towards the end of the summer and the anniversary of Grey’s death, time begins to unravel. Gottie must find a way to come to terms with everything she knows–and doesn’t know–about her past.

This is a stunning, beautifully-written meditation on family, loss, the ways our past can define us, and what it truly means to love someone. Each page holds something unexpected, and fans of epic romance, family dramas, physics, and science fiction will want to find a wormhole of their own so they can experience this book again and again.

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