In Five Years by Rebecca Serle Published by Simon and Schuster on March 2, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Family Life / General, Fiction / Friendship, Fiction / Romance / Time Travel, Fiction / Women
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Source: Bookstore
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Good Morning America, FabFitFun, and Marie Claire Book Club Pick
“In Five Years is as clever as it is moving, the rare read-in-one-sitting novel you won’t forget.” —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists
Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.
She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.
But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.
My Review
To be honest I had not heard much about this book before I bought it. It was a bit of an impulse buy or rather a cover buy for me. If you are a bookworm/major reader you will know exactly what I mean about it being a cover buy. It is just so dang pretty. Once I started to read it though I became very interested to find out what the dream Dannie had experienced early on in the book meant. Weird. That is what got me hooked on the story, my curiosity. Is the dream a prediction of the future and if so would you work to prevent it or just go with the flow? I would probably freak out and work to prevent it. I am not good with the unknown and neither is Dannie.
This is the story of Dannie and Bella’s friendship. A friendship that has lasted through girlhood into adulthood. One that is full of love and laughter. Dannie is a lawyer who has had an incredible loss in her childhood, the death of her brother. Since then she has followed a plan for her life to make sure and prevent anything bad from happening to her again. The problem with this idea is that life tends to have other plans and ones that can not be controlled. Dannie has to learn a lesson in letting go. Bella is an artist who loves to be spontaneous and live her life fully. She constantly finds herself falling in and out of love and traveling constantly. Really if you think about it Dannie and Bella are complete opposites however it seems to work wonderfully for them.
I very much enjoyed reading this story and learning about Dannie and Bella. I also appreciated how the story would go from the present to the past and then back to the present time. I appreciated getting glimpses into their childhoods because it helped me to appreciate their friendship all the more. I will say that their friendship isn’t perfect all the time which makes it all the more lifelike. I did find parts of their story to be a reminder of the women in the book Firefly Lane by Kristen Hannah. If you decide to read this story I believe that you will see the similarities as well.
In Five Years is the kind of book that I just flew through. It was easy reading and enjoyable like I have said above but it is also a story that has depth to it. If you want a story that is all about female friendship, love both platonic and romantic, and struggle then this may be the book for you. I will say this story did make me cry in the end but in my opinion, I still found it to be a wonderful read. This book does not come without its trigger warning which I will mention below so please take them into consideration before picking this book up.
Trigger Warnings:
- Death of a Sibling
- Neglectful Parents
- Cancer
- Death