Book review: “In Five Years”

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I finished this book in one day, so if this isn’t a testament to how readable I found it, I don’t know what is! But the premise was so unusual and clever that I literally couldn’t go to bed without finishing it.

The premise: Dannie has a plan and everything is falling into place. She’s getting engaged — right on schedule — to her boyfriend , whose as serious about his career and she is, and who checks all her boxes. She’s also about to land her dream job at one of New York’s most prestigious law firms.

But then: the night of her engagement, they head home to celebrate… and Dannie wakes up. Only it’s not 2020, it’s 2025. She’s in an apartment she’s never been in before — with a man she’s never seen in her life. And he seems to know all about her. They share just this brief time together, she falls asleep, and she wakes back right where she left off, newly engaged and about to start her dream job. What was that, WHO was that, and what did it mean?

This book is kind of about destiny and fate, but above all it’s about the different kinds of love and loyalty that sustain us, and truly, it’s about friendship. The fourth character left off in the brief description above is Bella, Dannie’s lifelong dear friend, a sparkling and free-spirited girl to Dannie’s list-making, schedule-driven Type A. Theirs is the real love story in this book. Whether or how Dannie will ever realize that vision she had in the first few pages is a lingering question, but less the focus as those people in our lives we can truly lean on, as well as those we can’t.



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