Review: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Author: Jennifer E. Smith

Genre: Contemporary, YA

Release: January 2nd 2012

Plot:

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

Imagine if she hadn’t forgotten the book. Or if there hadn’t been traffic on the expressway. Or if she hadn’t fumbled the coins for the toll. What if she’d run just that little bit faster and caught the flight she was supposed to be on. Would it have been something else - the weather over the Atlantic or a fault with the plane?

Hadley isn’t sure if she believes in destiny or fate but, on what is potentially the worst day of each of their lives, it’s the quirks of timing and chance events that mean Hadley meets Oliver...

Set over a 24-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver’s story will make you believe that true love finds you when you’re least expecting it. 

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Review:

Somehow, this book really works for me. I can imagine how and why it wouldn't for others, but personally, I honestly liked it a lot. 

I think, the key point here is the romance and the feelings portrayed here. This book spans the duration of roughly a single day and it's about two teenagers falling in love, more or less deeply, and this might sound really unbelievable to some. Maybe it was because I read the first ~20% and then had to wait a whole week before I could finish the rest, and that's why I didn't have a problem with how things went down, because it automatically felt like more time had passed. But otherwise, I see how it seems unrealistic and also kind of stupid to have two teenagers fall in love in the span of 24 hours during a flight. 

But yeah, as I said, I did really feel the chemistry between Hadley and Oliver and thought they were a cute couple, which in turn also made me enjoy the story a whole lot more than I would have otherwise, for obvious reasons.

I also truly loved the side story about Hadley's and Oliver's respective dads and how the case with Oliver reflected Hadley's case so perfectly in all the right aspects so that Hadley's story with her father could come to a very nice, very beautiful and sort of touching conclusion. I was actually moved. 

So, in the end, this is an extremely short read, I barely spent any time on it at all and only took so long to finish it because I couldn't bring it with me to Rome for the past week, and on top of being a light read it's also just really fluffy and cutesy where you can basically just shut down for four hours and enjoy the ride. I definitely liked it very much. I can see now why this is the most popular of Jennifer E. Smith's contemporaries now, and I would agree with this consensus, as the other two I've read by her weren't quite as good.