BookPage Reviews

Post-mortem pop quiz

Hazel Severy isn't a math person. While the rest of her adoptive clan revels in the art of quantum mathematics, Hazel would rather be running her beloved bookstore or reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. But when her grandfather, Isaac, dies under questionable circumstances, Hazel is thrust into a bizarre puzzle. Isaac has entrusted Hazel with his top-secret equation, one that could have a catastrophic impact if it falls into the wrong hands. Now Hazel must weed through the mathematics of Isaac's clues—without any help from her genius family—to make sure her grandfather's final wishes are honored before it's too late.

As the Severy family mourns their patriarch's death, each is in service of his or her own agenda. Why is Hazel's police officer brother behaving suspiciously? What burden is Isaac's professor son keeping from his wife and child? What is the motive behind Hazel's estranged cousin's extended stay? Most importantly, why are additional family members starting to die?

Each member of the charmingly odd Severy family is a work in (completely relatable) progress as they struggle to secure their place in the shadow of the legend that was Isaac Severy. Keeping up with their individual trials may seem daunting at first, but the effort is rewarded at the end of their respective dramas.

Debut novelist Nova Jacobs has plotted an elaborate riddle within a multifaceted exploration of family and identity. This genre-bending story will appeal to lovers of family dramas such as Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, as well as readers who prefer their stories full of intellectual suspense.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Copyright 2018 BookPage Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

A celebrated mathematician leaves a legacy of inexactitude to his confused progeny.Isaac Severy, the elderly patriarch of a numerically gifted clan, predicts his own demise and awaits his executioner one morning in his Hollywood Hills backyard. After his death, his granddaughter Hazel receives a letter from him containing clues to the equation that is his life's masterwork and also a prediction: "Three will die. I am the first." Only Hazel and, as will be revealed later, her brother, Gregory, have been selected by Isaac to fulfill his mathematical designs, although they are not blood relations but foster children taken in by Isaac's black-sheep son, Tom, and adopted by Isaac after Tom's imprisonment. Hazel is a failed Seattle bookseller, Gregory a not particularly diligent LAPD detective. These two nonmathematical Severys take turns with their uncle Philip, Isaac's son, a particle physicist whose academic career has stalled, having chapters told from their perspectives. Roman tic yearnings, of the illicit and/or near-incestuous variety, afflict all three. Several vividly sketched minor players vie for access to Isaac's secret, not least his reclusive daughter, Paige, a probability theorist, and her son, Alex, an aspiring international man of mystery. Strangers are also circling. P. Booth Lyons, allegedly a government agent, has sent his persistent secretary, Nellie Stone, to stalk Philip around the campus of Caltech. A strange professor wants Hazel to meet him at the La Brea Tar Pits. The path to Isaac's equation meanders through a hotel room numbered 137, a stubbornly password-protected computer, and a map of Los Angeles dotted with stickers noting dates and times. The second to die validates Isaac's dire prophecy, lending urgency to the quest to decipher the stickers. In lovely, inventive prose, Jacobs re-engineers the tropes of family drama to explore age-old conundrums of destiny versus self-determination. However, the sheer number of charact e rs and gambits threatens to overwhelm such a relatively short novel, as does the magnitude of its ambition. The eloquence of the language transcends—and almost redeems—the plot's gimmickry in this remarkable debut. Copyright Kirkus 2017 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

Renowned mathematical genius Isaac Severy has predicted his own death, and one of his last acts is to type a letter, asking Hazel, his adopted granddaughter, to track down and deliver his final equation to a trusted colleague. Hazel abandons her failing bookstore in Seattle to join her family in Los Angeles for Isaac's funeral. A student of literature, she's always felt out of place in a family of mathematicians. Doubtful of her abilities and in competition with cousins, academics, and shadowy corporations, she struggles with whom to trust. Her older brother, also a survivor of their troubled childhood and a once-close confidant, is a police detective caught up in his own investigations. Hazel encounters old Hollywood hotels, poisonous seeds, Italian tweeds, and Mark Twain disguises as she puts two and two together. VERDICT Jacobs's debut novel cleverly mixes people, plots, and puzzle with humor and heart. This brainy thriller will appeal to readers who enjoyed Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. [See "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/1/18.]—Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

The apparent suicide of a legendary mathematician drives Jacobs's intricate and moving first novel. Isaac Severy, renowned for having developed complex predictive equations for seemingly random events, such as "the erratic pattern of melting ice in the Arctic," dies in the backyard hot tub at his L.A. home after being electrocuted by a string of Christmas lights. His granddaughter, Hazel Severy, the owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives one last letter from him, postmortem. In the letter, Isaac states that he hopes not to evade the assassin who has been following him; asks Hazel to destroy his "work in Room 137," except for one equation, which she must hand over to a man whose "favorite pattern is herringbone"; warns her not to stay in his house after October 31st; and tells her that he is but the first of three people who will die. Hazel attempts to honor her grandfather's cryptic last requests and solve his murder. Plausible depictions of psychologically wounded characters enhance the surprising plot twists. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, Bankoff Collaborative. (Mar.)

Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly.