Both Hadley's mother and father love her and want to do right by her, despite the chaos of the divorce. TSP joins the illustrious list of YA novels with present parents. They're super into each other, and certainly feeling starstruck by the serendipity of everything, but their interactions are not cheesy or full of protestations of eternal tender devotion. The two form a real bond while flying on that plane, and I could see them actually going back to Connecticut and becoming a real couple. They do not fall under my heading of instalove. Their interactions are adorable and I especially loved their surprisingly deep conversations about love and marriage. Oliver really steals the show, though, particularly with his absurd lies about what he's studying at Yale. At least as much focus is put on Hadley's relationship with her father as on her blooming relationship with the adorable, British Oliver, who actually doesn't have a huge role in the second half of the book but for cameos. However, fun as that can be to read, I maintain the book had more depth than that, and, for that reason, I rate it more highly.
On the surface, this book seems entirely about the romance, about a girl and a boy meeting and falling in love over the course of just a day. There were a lot of quotes that reached out and grabbed me. I really did not have a problem with that at all, though I've never been as particular about tenses as most readers, but some of the flashbacks and memories had some awkwardness with tenses. TSP is written in third person present tense, which one does not see particularly often. Smith's writing is incredibly interesting. Had she not met Oliver, she might not have grown up enough to bond with her father again. Had she not missed the flight, she never would have met the sweet, charming, silly Oliver. Can I just be a character in a novel already? Seriously? Hadley misses her flight to London for her father's wedding by just four minutes. I have been on so many flights, but I've never ever gotten to flirt with a cute guy in the waiting area or sit next to one on the plane. This book has high ratings pretty much across the board, and I can certainly see why. In fact, TSP has a very cinematic quality to it.
The story has a similar feel to Love, Actually, with the sense that while everything doesn't turn out as hoped, love will ultimately conquer all. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, henceforth to be referred to as TSP for brevity's sake, is a sweet, quick little book.
0 kommentar(er)
