Jennifer E Smith Books in Order

If you want the signature YA romance: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight → This Is What Happy Looks Like → Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between
If you want the full Ellie and Graham story: This Is What Happy Looks Like → Happy Again
If you like travel, distance, and chance meetings: The Geography of You and Me → Field Notes on Love → You Are Here
If you want adult family stories: The Unsinkable Greta James → Fun for the Whole Family
If you're reading with younger kids: The Creature of Habit

Jennifer E. Smith grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, just north of Chicago, and she has said she cannot remember not writing. In fourth grade she won a school creative writing contest with a story about a girl and a horse. The prize was a trip to a writing workshop at the University of Illinois, and that early jolt of encouragement stayed with her.

She went on to study English at Colgate University, then moved into publishing in New York. She worked first at a literary agency and later as an editor, learning how books are shaped from the inside. She has said that editing made her a better writer, and writing made her a better editor.

Later, she earned a master's degree in creative writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Time abroad, and plenty of travel in general, fed something readers now recognize all over her fiction: airports, trains, road trips, cities at night, and those in-between moments when a character is leaving one life and stepping toward another.

Her first novel, The Comeback Season, came out in 2008 and grew out of her love of baseball.

That book, about grief, hope, and the Chicago Cubs, was an early sign of what Smith does well. Her characters are often young people standing at an emotional crossroads, trying to figure out family, love, and the strange role chance can play in both. You Are Here sends two lonely teens on a road trip. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight turns a missed flight into a twenty-four-hour romance and became her breakout novel.

From there, she kept returning to stories built around motion and timing. This Is What Happy Looks Like starts with a mistaken email between a Maine girl and a movie star. The Geography of You and Me begins in a blackout and stretches into long-distance love. Field Notes on Love puts two strangers on a cross-country train. Even Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between is shaped like a countdown, following one couple through their last night before college.

She likes hinge moments, the short stretches of time when everything can change.

Even when romance is at the center, Smith's books are rarely only romances. There are parents and siblings in the background, old losses that still ache, and characters trying to decide what home means. Later books widened the range. Windfall looks at money and friendship after a winning lottery ticket. The Unsinkable Greta James, her first adult novel, follows a musician and her estranged father on an Alaskan cruise after a family loss. Fun for the Whole Family turns to adult siblings, old road-trip memories, and secrets that have sat unopened for years.

She has also written for younger readers, including the picture book The Creature of Habit. Two of her young adult novels, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, were adapted for film. Her books have been translated into dozens of languages, and she now lives in Los Angeles. What comes through most, across all of it, is her affection for characters in motion, people who are lost, hopeful, awkward, or brave, and trying to find each other before the moment passes.