Book Review: "In Five Years" by Rebecca Serle
“In Five Years” by Rebecca Serle
Synopsis: Where do you see yourself in five years? When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.
But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.
After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.
That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.
Brimming with joy and heartbreak, In Five Years is an unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny. - Atria Books
Rating (out of 5): 4.25
Review:
Fair warning: this book stirred up a lot of emotions, and I feel like I am on edge all the time right now. Yes, I may have had some shower tears this week, which if you know me in person, is quite rare. This has the potential to wreck you, and I would be remiss not to mention that.
“The Dinner List” was one of my favorite books of 2018, and so I was quite excited to pick up Rebecca Serle’s newest book, and it’s definitely gotten a lot of buzz in our small bookstagram community. Thankfully, I thought it lived up to the hype, and at the same time, it wasn’t at all what I expected.
It’s pitched as a book about Dannie, who is in love with her dream man, and on the night that she gets engaged, she has a vision of her life 5 years in the future, and everything is different. Different apartment, different dude, different look. Then she wakes up, back in her “normal” existence. I expected this to be a book about romantic love, as that is how the description read, with some schmaltzy lesson about finding your real soulmate in unexpected places.
Welp, I’m glad to say that I was totally wrong.
We do watch Dannie navigate her relationship with David, but to me, the real love story is between Dannie and Bella. This book has one of the most realistic portrayals of female friendship I can remember reading, and I absolutely adored how this was at the heart of the book. In so many works, romantic love is the end-all, be-all, even though, for many of us, it’s a fleeting love. Maybe I’m feeling especially sensitive to this at this exact moment in the world, but I have never felt so supported by my long-time female friends, and I have never felt more connected to some of my oldest friends. Bella and Dannie are friendship goals, literally through thick and thin, and they are both charmingly flawed humans.
Yes, there is a resolution of Dannie’s vision, and it is not at all what I expected until way too late in the story line. We are spoiler-free here, so I basically can’t talk about the last 1/3 of the book — I will say that Rebecca Serle did a brilliant thing with the central conceit of this book, and it took me by surprise. This is a quick read; I read it in one sitting (half in the tub, half in my pajamas — a combo that I would endorse), and it’s just the right amount of cathartic emotional release.
TL;DR: A book about female friendship and love that is simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming.
If You Liked This, Try These:
“The Two Lives of Lydia Bird” by Josie Silver (my review here!)
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