Rebecca Serle | IN FIVE YEARS

Plot (via Goodreads):

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.

Review:

In Five Years is a short novel that really holds a special place in my heart. When I read the synopsis to this one, I thought it sounded unique and sort of the palette cleanser I needed in between my typical thriller novels I usually devour. I took a change and I am so glad I did. This is a different type of love story and one that I foresee sticking with me for a long time. I know that it will because I got a little teary eyed with a friend over drinks when I was telling him every single thing I could about this novel and how it impacted me. As a non-reader, he probably thought I was crazy but that's what good writing will do to you. It seeps into your pores and manifests its way into your heart and that is exactly what this story did for me. A pleasurable reading experience that left me breathless and sacrificing a bittersweet tear or two, In Five Years is the story that you take what you expect and throw it out the window because what it's really about is something that is poignant, delicate, and emotionally charged with a couple of brilliant twists that solidify Serle's stance in the literary world.

While I loved this story and I thought it was an easy read to enjoy in one sitting, my only drawback was that I wish I had gotten to know the characters a bit more because I felt that the pacing was quick and the story really held my attention, but with it being such a short novel, I would have loved to have spent more time with these characters. Maybe I'm selfish or maybe I was just high on Serle's prose, but this one could have easily been a 400+ page story for me and I would have gobbled it down either way.

Special thanks to Atria for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 4/5