Review: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

Summary

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan 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.

Thoughts

This book is a slow burn. We know from the start exactly how it ends, so it’s the epitome of “it’s about the journey.” While it might sound like it’s about romantic love, it is much more about friendship. It’s also not a light and happy story. This is painful and emotional the whole way through.

I adored the way expectations were handled in this book, that is all about expectations. Whether it’s the expectations the characters have of each other, themselves, or their expectations the reader has of the characters in the story, they all twist around so you can’t get a full hold on them.

I talked about this so much at book club, and my original review was just “wow” right times and a crying emoji. But it’s hard to talk about this without spoilers. So it was emotional and yet when I look back I think, why was I so captured by this?

Recommended.