I struggled so much with this one. I wanted to love it. With the rise in STEM books, I thought this would be a great addition to any YA library. However, I found this to be a bit boring and I didn't care about the characters at all. It is such a shame.

I did enjoy the footnotes. I found them very interesting.

Thank you to BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Several stories with mathematical schemes that helps a female protagonist solve problems. Each vignette has a historical tie.

Was not able to download it before archiving. It was a five star hopeful for me. So since I couldn’t give it a try , am explaining why I couldn’t read it. Had not meant it to affect the feed back

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one.

It's a collection of short historical fictions stories with female main characters using math. Okay, I can see a market. I can see it appealing to girls who love math and showing students creative ways math plays into the world outside of school. Each story is completely separate of the others and the author proivdes notes explaining the math concept and how his character used it after.

It was really choppy. The stories felt like they'd either been edited in chunks for space, or written with disjointed flow. It was hard to read stories that clumsy and cut off. And then I read in the notes after the fourth story that the author had pared them down a lot purposely because historical details "irritate most readers." Really? Not fans of historical fictions.

There are 5 stories. The first one takes up 40% of the book, making the others seem even skimpier and rushed. In general, every story needed more. More historical details, more flow, more....story.

I wanted to love this book; I really did. I have a math teacher in ’my building who wants us (the librarians) to find math-related novels for him to read aloud, so I was excited to see this possibility show up. Unfortunately, I don’t see this working well as a read-aloud. The opening is confusing, and I don’t see students getting wrapped into the story very well:

The Adventures of Ruby Pi and the Math Girls by Tom Durwood is a set of 5 mathematically inspired stories where the female protagonist, in different periods of time, uses the power of mathematics to solve mysteries and help with investigations. The key theme of this book is how mathematics can be used in everyday life.

I liked this book because it gives the reader an idea of how mathematics can be used in everyday life to solve many different problems. I also loved how the author used mathematical terminology throughout the book to describe various things, rather than non-mathematical terminology. I particularly loved the simile of the train as a vector, linking it to Newton's second law, F=MA, or force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. It is also good to see female protagonists in this often male-dominated subject, I hope it encourages more females to grow in mathematics.

However, it would have been nice to see more mathematics within this book, preferably more GCSE-level mathematics. I say this because this is, in some areas, more a book for A-Level Mathematics students as the maths covered is A-Level maths, such as Bayes Theorem and others. However, I very much doubt an A-Level student would want to read this book. I did not overly enjoy the book as it was a bit all over the place, meaning I struggled to understand the story and what was going on. Also, this is a very 'Woke' book as all the characters seem to be of an ethnic minority, including in one of the stories based in England, and I would argue that it sometimes portrays white English individuals in a negative light. I understand the need for more equality, but that does not mean presenting the minority in a better light than the majority, this just leads to further racism. I will not say anymore as this is a whole essay on race, discrimination and related themes.

Altogether, I rate this book 2 stars making this an alright book, although I personally did not enjoy it a lot of it, I did however enjoy the maths presented in the book and all the mathematical terminology used. I would like to thank NetGalley and Books Go Social for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book in return for an honest book review.

This was a great historical fiction book. It dealt with adventures going to Russia and helping people out this book was approved by netgalley and the publisher.

This is the second book in the series of Ruby Pi. Both book feature a series of historical fiction stories that are based on young women using math.
Opinion
I had high hopes for this book. Having a love for math, I wanted something that would bring younger people to see the value and love of numbers. What I found was interesting but disjointed. I think that Durwood, in his attempt to keep the stories short, cut too much of the necessary background. I had difficulty following the stories.
I was intrigued by the math but it too was cut short. This, I understand. I have two math degrees so my interest and understanding goes beyond the typical. Durwood needed to cut it short to keep from losing the common interest.
What I did find helpful was that Durwood added notes at the end of each story. I honestly would enjoy reading his footnotes without the story. His connection of math to what happened in history in these footnotes was more interesting than the stories themselves.
Many thanks to Net Galley and BooksGoSocial for providing me an ARC of this book.

This series was not a good fit for me or my daughter. I had hoped for stronger female characters and more engaging stories.

I was really excited to read this book but sadly I found myself to be disappointed by it. I expected great things in terms of females in a male dominated mathematics world being totally badass and using maths and their skill sets to solve crimes. Although there were parts of that in the story, they are females in a male dominated world, they are using maths to solve crimes, I didn't get badass viv=bes and I don't think they really shone in this book and that was disappointing

Ruby Pi and the Math Girls is billed as YA, and I chose it to encourage female students to see how STEM has changed the outcome of pivotal albeit historical moments in time.

The reality is that the "girls" aren't shown as leaders, the writing is abrupt and boring, and the plots aren't engaging. I'm hoping the finished version improves upon all of the above.

As it stands, this would not be a good choice for YA or New Adults.

I realise I might be missing something. I really don’t like being negative in my reviews, after all the author has always put so much of themselves into the words on the page. I picked this book up to go along with, and I thought complete the stories in the previous book, not having read them before I did so. But again on this occasion I’m disappointed. I was expecting stories that would draw female readers into the exciting world of maths in the real world using fiction. Unfortunately I did not find this. The stories seem haphazard, and don’t to me have female leads. This book would not hold the interest of the girls I teach at all. So while I commend the idea behind the book, I personally think it misses the mark by a long way. Thank you to Empire Studies Press and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.