Review: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight






Title: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Author: Jennifer E. Smith
Series: No
Genre: Young-Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publication Date: January 2, 2012
Publisher: Poppy/Little Brown
Pages: 236
My Rating: 3.5 Stars





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.

This book did not have a good beginning. I didn't expect much from it going in since I was only reading it for a reading challenge, but when I started reading it, I was like, wait what?

Let me clarify.

It was the writing. I've read plenty of different writing styles and out of them, I've always preferred past tense to present. I never really cared about first or third person. This one had present tense and it was in third person. That's like the worst combination ever. Especially since there was no point of the third person; it was all from Hadley's point-of-view anyway. And then it kept shifting. Whenever there was a back story, it would move to past, which is the correct thing to do but sometimes, during a flashback, it would go into past perfect instead of simple past and that made no sense. There were errors in grammar, too.

I would be reading a flashback or a conversation (I liked their conversations) and I would be happy and immersed in the story. But then it would go back to third person present and become just awkward and clumsy and I would get snapped right back. It was annoying.

It happened for at least half of the book. Reading story, liking characters and then snap! we're back. It wasn't until after I was halfway through the book that the writing started to get better (or maybe I just got used to it). And it was at the 60% point that I was finally able to stop frowning and raging over the writing and start actually enjoying the book.

I really enjoyed the last 40%. It was about Hadley's family and about Oliver's family and about the both of them getting strength from each other. Hadley's family dynamic and how her relationship with father developed contributed a lot to the book and gave it depth. And you have no idea how glad I am that there's wasn't any Love at First Sight crap. Because if there were, shit would have hit the fan. One star rant angry rant/review which no one would've liked.

Last but not least, there was a message to the book (for me, at least): 

Hadley's dad was wrong to leave his family the way he did. But the alternative would have been to lie to his family and stay with them even though he was in love with someone else. And to break the heart of the woman he was in love with. So while he did something wrong, it was a necessary evil.

I used to think that you could always avoid doing something wrong, making a mistake, hurting someone. That's not true. Some things, even if they're not entirely right, have to be done so that you don't end up doing something worse. You just have to be brave enough. And Hadley's dad was.

And that's it for this review. I hope you liked it and I do recommend checking this book out. It's a short, sweet and easy read. And, even through the frustration of the writing, it's worth it.

3.5 The-last-40%-was-good Stars


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