I saw a trailer recently for a new movie which will premiere on Netflix in September and it just looked so perfect at the moment that I was instantly hooked. And since I am quite impatient at times, I immediately looked for the novel that the movie is based on. Et voilà: “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight” by Jennifer E. Smith.
This YA-novel was first published some ten years ago and it’s the story of 17-year-old Hadley who is grudgingly on her way to her father’s wedding. He left the family about a year ago and moved from the US to London permanently and she still hasn’t forgiven him for it. On her flight she meets Oliver, himself on his way to a wedding in London, or so Hadley thinks. They have an instant connection, and when Hadley realises that Oliver didn’t go to a wedding at all, she leaves to find him. But are Hadley’s feeling mutual?
A third person narrator tells Hadley’s story which, for the first third of the novel, consists of many flashbacks to the past year and a half and the difficult emotions Hadley has been dealing with since. Oliver’s presence lightens the novel’s mood but he is also dealing with family issues as it turns out. We follow Hadley for a little more than 24 hours but during that time she learns a lot, resolves many of her recent problems and falls happily in love, so, in the end, it turns out to be an easy to read, wonderful feel-good-novel with loads of references to Dickens (especially “Our Mutual Friend”).
