Seventeen-year-old physics prodigy Gottie has experienced much loss in her short life. One summer on from losing her grandfather and being rejected by her first love, Gottie finds herself free-falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole, but through time, back to when these experiences happened. These time-slips intensify when Gottie’s childhood friend returns after being away for five years, and so she works on the “The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle” to try to figure out what’s happening to her.
This bold, soulful debut about loss, the black hole of grief, friendship - and physics - sparkles with wit, warmth and sentences to be savoured. Gottie is an utterly unique character whose journey (and quirks) will lift the heart.
My heart is a kaleidoscope, and when we kiss it makes my world unravel . . .
Last summer, Gottie's life fell apart. Her beloved grandfather Grey died and Jason, the boy to whom she lost her heart wouldn't even hold her hand at the funeral. This summer, still reeling from twin heartbreaks, Gottie is lost and alone and burying herself in equations. Until, after five years absence, Thomas comes home: former boy next door. Former best friend. Former everything. And as life turns upside down again she starts to experience strange blips in time - back to last summer, back to what she should have seen then . . .
During one long, hazy summer, Gottie navigates grief, world-stopping kisses and rips in the space-time continuum, as she tries to reconcile her first heartbreak with her last.
The Square Root of Summer is an astounding and moving debut from Harriet Reuter Hapgood.
Harriet Reuter Hapgood is a freelance journalist who has worked with Marie Claire, ELLE and InStyle in the UK. The Square Root of Summer was inspired by her German mathematician grandfather and her lifelong obsession with YA romance, which includes an MA thesis on Dawson's Creek from London College of Fashion and a dissertation on romantic comedies at Newcastle University. She lives in Brighton.
