The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

⭐️⭐️

Synopsis:

When Gottie H. Oppenheimer is hurled through her first wormhole, she begins a journey through her past. She is faced with all her loves and losses in all her summers. But when Gottie thinks she has conquered her fears and confronted her past, the wormholes don’t stop. She keeps getting sucked in and thrusted into different versions of reality. 

Hmmm:

Square Root of Summer? More Like Square Root of Boring…

Gottie is German. This means that she and her family randomly spurt out words and sentences in German without translating most of the time. So that means that the reader, which would be me, has to constantly type in those sentences and words into the German translator. 

Gottie also has a douche ex and a best friend in the same town; which means she has a crush on her best friend, Thomas, while her ex is occupying her mind even though he was a total jerk and now has a girlfriend who is hotter than Gottie. This means that Gottie ends up hurting Thomas, only to find out that her ex wasn’t worth it, when she probably knew that from the beginning… 

Dislikes:

I wouldn’t call this book horrible, but it was definitely missing something in the “wow” department. It didn’t have enough substance to it. Gottie was such a whiz at science and physics but we still didn’t get a clear explanation on how these quantum leaps were occurring. Gottie was pretty much a scurrying lab mice hopping from time period to time period and even when she was in her own reality, she was running; from her problems, her friends.. etc. 

I was confused. The author, Hapgood, didn’t just hurl Gottie into these wormholes. She hurled the readers too by not giving us any insight or clues that Gottie was in a different universe, dimension, time period, or whatever. Hapgood didn’t really make a clear distinction as to what was happening. I’m thinking maybe Gottie was just having flashbacks, which would eliminate a ton of points for this book seeing as how the wormholes were the only unique feature about this whole book. 

Love interest. This was probably the most annoying part. Gottie couldn’t make up her mind. To make my ex, the jerk, the center of my affection? or to make Thomas, my best friend, and decent potential soul mate the center of my attention? Oh, this is so hard. 

The love triangle was so weak and predictable. If you’re gonna do something as cliché as this, at least make it dramatic and strong. 

Likes:

Aesthetics. I enjoyed the summery, garden, bookshop vibe in this book. That’s part of what grabbed me about this book. I also found the cover to be eye pleasing, haha. 

Dialogue and quotes. All the scientific facts and physics mentions really were interesting to read. I always enjoy learning something I don’t know, especially if it will help me understand and follow the characters better. 

Thomas was about the only person I liked in this book. He was down to earth, witty, funny, and thoughtful. Gottie doesn’t deserve him. 

The idea of wormholes. I use the word idea because that is practically the only thing saving this book from a 1 star rating. Hapgood didn’t execute the idea of wormholes well at all. It was messy and rushed. Oops, this is supposed to be the like section lol. I’ll stop. 

Welp

This book had so much potential. Although I didn’t enjoy it, I’m gonna keep it anyway. It’s a nice hardcover addition to my book shelf. Below are a few quotes that I tabbed. 

"But there's nothing I find more infuriating than someone refusing to have a fight when I'm picking one, and he knows that. And I hate that he knows that."  [

"I like the idea of a permanent record," he explains. "Something to say, This Is Who I Am, even when I'm not that person anymore. I left one back in Toronto." 

"Sometimes you're too busy living to take a photo. You don't have time to stop and freeze the moment, because you're in it." 

"This is the trouble with secrets - you can't just reveal them and hope for normality. Even when exposed, they leave ripples in the universe, like a stone skimmed on the canal." 

"The geometry of spacetime is a manifestation of gravity. And the geometry of heartbreak is a manifestation of a stopped clock. Time stands still." 

"I don't want to disappear. I don't want to do this anymore, but I don't know how to stop it. I'm here. I want to exist. I'm ready to live in the world again, but the world won't let me."