Author: Jennifer E Smith
Publisher: Headline
Release Date: 24 May 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0755384037
Synopsis
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.
My Review
I heard a lot about this on blogs at the beginning of the year and there seemed to be a love for this book. It wasn't in stock at my library so I put a request in for them to buy it. For some reason they had trouble getting in and it took them from February to July to buy the book. It arrived last week and I was so excited, though it was thinner than I thought.
I sat down to read it in the evening on Sunday and ended up reading the whole thing, took me about an hour and a half.
I hoped it would be good and I wasn't disappointed. This book is set over a 24 hour period and focuses on Hadley and Oliver, they meet at an airport and seem to have a connection. Can you ever be sure if it is meant to be? I was a bit skeptical in the fact that I am not a fan of Insta-love, i believe it takes time, honesty, work and commitment to properly fall in love with someone, and I worried this would be a victim of it, but it is written in such a beautiful way and the characters don't fall head over heels or anything, it was just right. Mostly like they were building foundations for a future relationship rather than jumping right in.
Hadley is quite pessimistic, her dad is getting re-married to a woman she's never met, she's still angry with her dad for leaving and moving halfway across the world and she's not sure what to believe in anymore. But as the novel progresses you really see her grow as a character.
I have often pondered what life would be like if certain small events hadn't occured, such as what would have happened if i'd have left on time from work the other day, would I have got in front of that car that crawled at 10 miles an hour, would I have got in before my dinner burned and had a proper meal. etc it goes on, so I loved how this book started, Hadley misses her flight by why seems an insignificant four minutes, but so many things could have made those four minutes happen, and if she had caught her flight, she would never have met Oliver. Do things really happen for a reason?
Oliver is like, the perfect guy, sweet, understanding, good sense of humour and will listen to you. I can totally see why Hadley feels the connection to him, even I was starting to stare love struck at the pages. But he isn't just there to be an opposite for Hadley, he becomes a person of his own and I was just as interested in his story as I was hers.
To be honest, at first I thought her dad was a total As*, why would someone choose to walk out on his family and move halfway round the world then moan he doesn't get to see her enough. He can't expect her to just uproot her life. He actually made me quite cross, but as the book goes on you can see his love for Hadley and the situation is looked at from other angles and by the end, I didn't love him, but I could understand his point of view.
For such a short book this really packs a punch. It's like a rollercoaster of emotions and when you are done, you will sigh in contentment and want to read it over again just so you can get back into that little world.
Pure bliss.
My Rating
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