Review coming soon. Fell behind due to illness, amd working on all of the old ones now.

This one will not be forgotten. This book was so impressive. I truly loved it!
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC; opinions are mine.


Pub Date was March 10, 2020
#InFiveYears #RebeccaSerle #NetGalley

Incredible. Just in-cre-di-ble. This book stayed with for far too long after I finished reading it. What would you change if you knew life was going to be different? Would you change anything? Would you just sit back and wait for it to happen or would you fight it? Rebecca Searle told an incredible story of the whats and woulds.

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.

Well worth the hype.

What a heartbreakingly beautiful story!
It totally did not play out how I imagined it would, but maybe that made it even better.

Couldn’t put this down - a one day read! And my first read on my Kindle. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this edition.

Loved this story! There is a saying: When we make plans for ourselves, God laughs!!!
And this story reflects that… Thank you for the ARC!

For fans of Emily Giffin, this is a wonderful novel of the complexities of female friendship. This turned out to be so much deeper than the rom com I was expecting. Such a well written book that stayed with me long after I finished it.

Highly recommend and will look for more from this author.

This was the saddest book I've read. Absolutely heartbreaking, I have reccomended it as a time fr dancing, but make it millennials.

I absolutely loved Serle's debut for adults, so I was thrilled to be approved for her second book! And I was even more excited to read it when my newest book club overwhelmingly voted for this one to kick off our club. It's a very quick read - I literally read the whole thing in one sitting in a morning, absolutely riveted. On the surface, I thought this would be a bit more of a romantic comedy - but it is definitely not that at all. It is a love story, but really more of a story of friendship than anything else.

Dannie is a planner - a lawyer working very hard to stick to her ambitious career plans. She approaches her relationship with David much the same way. But on the night they get engaged, she falls asleep and wakes up - five years later - in a life not at all like what she works toward - in a totally different neighborhood, and with a totally different man. Everything about this encounter shakes her to the very core - even after she wakes up again in her more familiar surroundings.

I sort of thought that the book would continue to rotate between Dannie's present and her five years in the future, but she only receives that one glimpse... and slowly Dannie's life begins to change, regardless of her plans. It's an emotional read - and totally unexpected. Her best friend, Bella, is in so many ways Dannie's opposite, but they have been friends since they were seven. I didn't expect the bulk of the storyline. And though I did enjoy the magic of her vision - I really appreciated the way the pieces fit together. While the characters aren't deeply developed, they do still come to life. I certainly felt emotionally attached to them, and frankly wasn't expecting to cry at all, let alone as much as I did. I am curious to see what the rest of the group will think of this one! Based on the text chain, I think everyone finished it - always a good sign! I am sure it will lead to a lively discussion!

I really loved this book! This was the first book I’ve read by this author and it wasn’t what I was expecting, but in a good way. I always enjoy a good book cry and this one didn’t disappoint. A great story about love, life and friendship.

Dannie lives by numbers and has her five year plan laid out with her fiancé. But on the night of her engagement she has a dream or a premonition of five years in the future that she can’t stop thinking about.

I loved this book. I loved watching Dannie’s story play out and getting to know her as a character.

This book was a slow burn, melt your heart love story. The characters were well written and the plot flowed beautifully.

This book was so heart warming. It had me in all my feelings. I can't wait to read her new one soon!

Flew through this book so fast! It reminded me of Something Borrowed meets something else that I can't quite put my finger on. But in a good way!

“You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.”

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own. Any quotes I use are from an unpublished copy and may not reflect the finished product.

Before starting In Five Years, I thought it would be similar to Josie Silver's One Day in December (it's not). I also assumed there would be a love triangle, and one that took place over the span of a few years. Thankfully, there's no love triangle. There's actually very little romance at all, to be completely honest. It was like a Diet Romance - - all the calories with none of the flavor (there's nothing hot and steamy about this one).

Dannie knows what she wants, and she knows how she wants it. She has a plan, and she has stuck to that plan for years. She and her fiancé are compatible, equally successful, and more than a little stuck. They've planned for everything, except each other. Aaron, the guy from her dream, plays a large role in the blurb, but really doesn't impact her life in any big way. He's simply there or around from time to time. She doesn't entertain feelings for him, and he doesn't seem interested in her (other than friendship). I'm not sure if the synopsis was intentionally misleading, or if I was supposed to look at it differently.

Bella is Dannie's best friend and total opposite - - sisters in every way that matters. Dannie has always felt like Bella was her responsibility, and didn't notice that Bella nurtured in her own way. They really complimented each other, and I enjoyed the ease of their conversations and interactions. Their love for each other was palpable; something to be treasured.

I wish the author had elaborated more on the death Dannie mentions, and how her visits with a therapist helped her deal with what was happening in her life (if they helped at all). Both the death and the therapist were mentioned on multiple occasions, but it was always brief and without much of an explanation. Everything fit into the story, but those two things really stuck with me for some reason.

The characters start out in their mid-twenties, and we see them in their early thirties. However, I always felt like the characters were much older, like in their late forties. They didn't act like they were in their twenties, and I'm sure that was a character trait for Dannie, but everything about them felt older. It would always throw me when Dannie mentioned someone's age, because I'd been picturing people differently. I'm not sure how else to explain it, haha.

There are no surprises in this book, but it was an enjoyable read. My eyes were misty for a couple of pages, but it wasn't like the book dropped something unexpected into my lap at the last minute. There's a small twist towards the end, but it fits Dannie's character, and it ties the rest of the story together.

Overall, I thought In Five Years was a wonderful book about friendship, and the complexities of relationships in general. Neglectful parents, present parents, married couples, engaged couples, dating couples, and people who just seem to get along really well from the start. It was nice seeing so many different dynamics between the characters, and I thought the author told a wonderful tale that was both meaningful and memorable. It was a love story, just not the one you're expecting. (★★★⋆☆)

"It feels impossible how much space there can be in this intimacy, how much privacy. And I think that maybe that is what love is. Not the absence of space but the acknowledgment of it, the thing that lives between the parts, the thing that makes it possible not to be one, but to be different, to be two."

I actually liked this one a lot, totally devoured it. And the audiobook narration by Megan Hilty was perfection.

But a few things about this book.

-This is not a romance, in fact there’s zero romance so if you’re a mostly romance reader or are expecting this to be a romance, this is not the book for you. This is women’s fiction. I was fine with the no romance part.

-The blurb says a lot, but at the same time it’s hella misleading, I was expecting for this to be more along the line of F*ck Love but I couldn’t have been more wrong. And I’m ok with the twist and turns the story took.

- The star of the book is the friendship of Dannie and Bella, and how an amazing friendship can also be one of the greatest loves we have.

-Because the friendship was so great and special is also why I cant give this 5 stars. When the premonition finally comes true, it’s so anticlimactic and hard to comprehend for me. The whole thing made no sense and shouldn’t have happened.

-I’m totally ok with the ending. I definitely was not rooting for Dannie and Aaron to be end game, there was zero chemistry there.

In Five Years
Rebecca Serle

I have no idea why it took me so long to read Serle’s March 2020 release, In Five Years because it was a one sitting, beyond any expectation I could have had, read and no wonder it was on so many pick lists. The novel opens on Dannie’s engagement day and after celebrating a little too much she wakes up in a different life. From then on Serle keeps her audience engaged learning all about Dannie and Bella, their loves, friends, families, how they’re different and how they’re alike and as the layers are peeled she reveals two beautiful, complicated besties. With a conversational narrative, an assemblage of unforgettable characters and a page turning one of a kind plot Serle delivers an unforgettable tale. This novel will appeal to fans of women’s fiction, or books about friends and readers will not be able to put this one down.

Dannie and Bella have been best friends sine they were seven but they are as different as night and day. Bella is impulsive, is in love with love and has been in and out of relationships dozens of times, changes men, careers, lifestyles and time zones like most of the world changes socks. Where as, Dannie has had her life planned since she was young and she’s right on track, has the perfect investment banker boyfriend, living in the perfect New York apartment, working as a corporate lawyer at the NY firm she’s wanted to work at since she was a small girl. Then on the night Dannie gets engaged she experiences something she doesn’t know if is a dream, premonition or the result of too much celebratory champagne when she wakes up in a strange apartment, in bed with a man who didn’t just put a ring on her, after having the best sex of her life.

This book sounded very interesting. It seemed like a time-travel romance. However, the story was confusing and hard to follow.

I love love loved this one! This book shows you the relationship between both lovers and friends and which one to cherish.

I really enjoyed this book. The premise was really good and the characters were great. I could totally see this being adapted into a movie.