The James Logan Courier

By Yari Nieves-Rivera, Courier Book Editor


The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith was a really great book to read in my spare time, considering that it was everything that I wasn’t expecting. I picked it up because John Green, my favorite author, suggested it. Oddly enough, it has become one of my favorite books to read. It’s new, and a great read for teenagers.

It’s set in an airport, in the span of one day. Hadley Sullivan is a seventeen year old girl on her way to her father’s wedding, in London. Considering that her mother and father are divorced, she’s forced to go by herself. It was supposed to be a pretty normal flight across the country, until she misses her flight. At first, she thinks of it as a sign of good luck, and fate telling her to not go to the wedding. Still, she re-schedules the flight so that she can get to the wedding just on time.

Then, she has to go to the bathroom. When people don’t want to watch her suitcases for her, she decides to take a bunch of her stuff with her. That’s when Oliver walks into her life, a British gentleman going to Yale.
Well, not so much a gentleman, but a teenager like her.

It’s mostly a romance novel, but it’s done in a very funny way. Hadley and Oliver are both very funny, and they both deal with a lot of hard things in their lives. They help each other through tough patches in their lives, in the matter of twenty-four hours. Considering that this books deals with a lot of issues teenagers deal with nowadays, its interesting to watch it all happen in only a day.

Hadley and Oliver are both very complex characters, with hidden secrets that they would prefer not to share. Oddly enough, when they meet, they just spill things to each other while waiting for their flight. Since they both have Dad problems, it’s easy to see them bond at first, but the more time they spend with each other, the more they seem to get close.

Smith did a great job of creating a short love story that affects two people in the best way. With the most unusual setting, in the most annoying place on Earth, the airport is the place where they meet each other, and changed each other's lives. I recommend this romance novel to people who like unusual love stories, and who (like everyone else) hate airports.