There's a lot of hype right now for Rebecca Serle's <i>In Five Years</i>, but I'm still trying to figure out if I liked it. The plot is relatively straightforward at first, Dannie is a young and driven attorney who has a five year plan for her career in life. She will work for the law firm she's always dreamed of working for and will be married to her partner David (who proposes at the start of the book). However, things start to change when Dannie has a dream or flash forward of five years into the future that shows a very different life than she planned.

I liked the premise of the book, but I think my hesitation in rating it higher is that I never really felt the friendship between Dannie and Bella, which is supposed to be the driving force in the story. Both characters seemed relatively closed off and I never really felt the bond between them. The same holds true for Dannie and the other characters in the book (with maybe the exception of the relationship between Dannie and her boss). For a relatively short book, I also felt like there were a lot of characters that popped up (the two women in tech and the friends they go to the beach with), who don't really add much to the plot & then get lost along the way.

It was a fun, easy read, but I was a little disappointed just because there is so much hype about this book right now.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

This book was very readable, but for some reason did not leave a lasting impression on me. The crux of the book is really the friendship between Bella and Dannie and for me their relationship was never fully developed. Dannie says how important the relationship is but it never really rang true for me. It was a lot of tell instead of show.

The medical parts were well done for the most part, but I did notice a few inconsistencies, a pet peeve of mine as a writer of medical fiction.

Overall, a pleasant read, but maybe not the right one for me.

In Five years by Rebecca Serle is filled with so many moments of reflection and reminders- the first being to never assume you know the journey an amazing author will take you on.

When I read the synopsis I thought I had prepared myself for the love story that was ahead of me. I was so wrong. It is multiple love stories wrapped up in the beautiful, heartbreaking, poignant words of one of my new favorite authors.

Dannie is one who needs to live by facts, realities and sense. She has her life planned out and makes decisions based on those plans becoming a reality. On what should be the night that starts the next planned stage of her life she has a dream that rocks her enough to stay with her over the next four- and-a-half years. She doesn't believe in visions or premonitions-until the man from her dreams is standing right in front of her. She has no choice but to believe that dream to be what it was-her future . Only who he is when she meets him is less than ideal and Dannie begins to do everything she can to prevent that vision from becoming a reality.

Every time I started a new chapter I was waiting for moments where the story would take a turn to lead to the conclusion I assumed it would be. And once it was over I realized I read this story like Dannie led those life changing emotional four and a half years. This story was filled with love, heart break, life changing, affirming and growth moments and is one I will cherish and read again and again.

*Arc generously provided for an honest review.

It's true what other reviewers have said about this book--it's hard to put down! I was intrigued by the premise and very invested in the characters. I loved Dannie and Bella's friendship--that is probably the highlight of this story for me!
The commentary on life in NYC was interesting--as someone who lived on the east coast and visited NYC often but moved back to CA, I'm really thankful for the space here in Northern CA and don't think I can go back to living in an East Coast city. I liked that the book gave me space to reflect on that.
But of course I love reading books set in NYC and this book was no exception. I will definitely be recommending this one and liked it even better than Me Before You! It was certainly a tear jerker for me though so I might have to warn readers of that!

Here's the thing. I absolutely LOVED Serle's previous book, THE DINNER LIST. This one...just okay. I really enjoyed the dynamic between the lead and her best friend and appreciated that their love story was the core relationship of the book. My issue was that I found the lead to be so unlikable, leaving her boyfriend hanging for 5 years while she waits for some dream she had to actually come to fruition. She came across so selfish and it really made it difficult for me to connect with the story, especially in the back half of the book when things take a pretty dark turn. Not for me, but I know a lot of people are enjoying this one, and I'm still a big fan of the author and look forward to her next book.

This was my first read of 2020 and I loved it! As with Serle's last novel (The Dinner List), this was a super quick, fast paced book that I was able to read in just a few hours. Although I figured out the big twist at the end at about the 70% mark, the overall storyline was very engaging and different than what I was anticipating. This is definitely an auto-read author for me at this point.

Thank you Netgalley and Atria books for the advance copy of this book.

Wow. I have not been this broken by a book since Me Before You. A beautiful story of love, loss, and friendship. I truly loved every character in this book and wanted a happy ending for all of them! This book, and the lessons Dannie learned about getting out of her comfort zone will stick with me for a long time. Now please excuse me while I go finish sobbing into my pillow.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy of this book.

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle Follows Dannie, a Manhattan lawyer who has her life planned out perfectly, sometimes even down to the minute.
She has a well crafted answer to the age old question- Where do you see yourself in five years?
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Life is not always going to pan out the way you plan.
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I am sitting here on my bed. I just finished reading. My face has tears running down it. I’m a big ball of emotion. I loved every minute of it. I devoured this book in less than a day.
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Thank you #netgalley and #simonandschuster for an advanced copy! Coming to a bookstore near you March 2020! •

Don’t be fooled by thinking this is a cutesy rom-com novel because it is not. It’s far more than that. It’s about a beautiful friendship and going on a life’s journey to discover oneself.
On December 15, 2020, Dannie interviews for a lawyer position at a big firm that she really wants to work with. Later that night, she gets engaged to David. After their engagement, Dannie falls asleep, but is transported to December 15, 2025 and is in a different apartment, wearing a different engagement ring, and the man is a totally different man from David.
Dannie tries to fight fate. Along the way she does meet that man and has heartbreak and friendship along the road.
Definitely a tear jerker where chocolate and tissues are a must have, but this is a book you will not want to put down.

I've had mixed experiences with Serle's books.
I devoured Famous In Love and its sequel. I could not get into The Dinner List, despite my best efforts.
In Five Years stands out from all of those books. I read it in a single sitting, tears falling down my face as I finished the last page.
It's a common question that we all have some kind of answer to: "where do you see yourself in five years?"
Dannie's response is a typical one - senior associate at the firm she's interviewing at, living on Gramercy Park. married to her current banker boyfriend.
That night, the dream she has of her life five years in the future, is anything but her plan.
And so begins one of the most poignant, moving, and excellent books I've ever read.
This book made me feel so many emotions, which is rare for me. I laughed. I sobbed. I felt a punch in my gut.
And I kept reading, until I finished this book.
In Five Years is an extraordinary book, and one I'm still thinking about now.

I can't believe I had this book sitting in my dashboard on NetGalley just ready to be read. I finished reading this title in ONE day. It was not what I expected at all, but in a good way. This book was more about friendship than love or time travel (ha). I had a feeling something was going to happen to Dannie's best friend so I wasn't really shocked when that all came together. I am definitely going to look into Rebecca Serle's other books. I would definitely recommend this title to any Colleen Hoover fan. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy. The book will be published on March 3rd.

I adored Rebecca Serle’s The Dinner List, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her new book (out in March). Dannie has her next five years planned out down to the last detail: marry her boyfriend and land her dream job. Until one night she has a dream where she is five years in the future, with another man. She ignores it for four and a half years, until that dream man enters her life for real, and all her perfectly laid plans fly out the window. The premise of this book is so unique, I flew through it because I couldn’t begin to guess how the story would resolve itself. In Five Years was magical, heart-wrenching, and romantic all at the same time.

This book is about a woman who seemingly has the perfect life - great boyfriend (soon to be fiance), upwardly mobile job and a best friend to share everything with. However, on the night of her engagement she goes to bed and wakes up five years in the future in an apartment she's never seen with a man who is not her boyfriend. I was hooked on this book from the first couple of chapters. This book is a great followup to The Dinner List (I enjoyed it a lot more). It is a great love story, though not necessarily the story you would expect. The characters were terrific and I loved the time I spent with them. The book made me laugh and cry. I did not love the ending, but the rest of it was so good that I still loved the book.

Mini Review posted on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treat.your.shelf/
Full Review posted on blog: https://wordpress.com/view/treatyourshelf.home.blog

This book was a perfect storm of a five star read for me. I picked it up on a bus ride home from New York City, not realizing that the entire story takes place there. With the lights of NYC literally fading in my rearview mirror, I could completely visualize the nonstop hustle Serle introduced through the main character Dannie, a corporate lawyer, and her fiancé, David. Their drive and passion for their careers reminded me so much of people in my own life, that I melted into the plot instantly.

Serle is a new author for me, although her previous book has been sitting on my shelf for months now. I will be reading it promptly. Her character descriptions were poignant, touching, believably flawed, and relatable. Dannie has her life planned out. She knows where she wants to be in five years, and she takes steps to get herself there every single day. On the night of her engagement, Dannie has a dream, vision, premonition, call it what you’d like, of her actual reality in five years time. It is nowhere near what she is striving for. Discomfited, she tries to shake it off and go about her life as usual. She takes a new job, she gets lunch with her flighty, ethereal best friend, Bella, and she thinks about her dream.

Rebecca Serle knows how to create characters that readers care about. The backstory of each person, and the sheer number of details that went into creating each of them is remarkable, and the way that they relate to each other is, simply put, wonderful. The setting was perfect for the narrative, something I don’t often consider while reading. New York City seemed to take on a life of its own, pulsing throughout the story, and carrying the characters along the never-slowing whirlwind of life.

I could not have guessed where the narrative was going. My heart was wrenched in a million different directions as I read, and emotions were rampant. I read this in one day, and although I received an advanced eGalley on NetGalley from Atria Books in exchange for an honest review, I fully expect to purchase the finished novel once it is published.

Love doesn’t require a future.

This is most likely my final review of the year and although I failed by leaving more than 30 books on my “Currently Reading” shelf (which were 100% already read and only left there to serve as reminders of my failure to post things in a timely fashion), I can at least finish up the decade as a rightreader for once and a glowing recommendation for In Five Years when it gets released this Spring.

So here’s a little confession about a movie trope I love but don’t seem to find too often in books: The “WAKE UP WITH A DIFFERENT LIFE.” You know what I’m talking about? You go to sleep and when you wake up you live in a different house with a different spouse with either zero or additional children than what you had when you went to bed and you don’t know how it happened? Lordy be, that is a fave for me.

If you know me, you know I’m not really a blurb reader so the only thing I knew about this before begging endlessly for it requesting it was that it begins with Dannie falling asleep on the eve David proposes to her and when she wakes up . . . .

“It’s 2025, a man I’ve never met is my boyfriend, and I live in Brooklyn.”

I was like . . . . .

BAZINGA.

Then Dannie actually wakes up and apparently it was only an extremely lucid dream – but one she just can’t seem to shake as she goes on about her life up to the December 15, 2025 date where her future apparently has taken a turn her meticulous life-planning obsession hasn’t quite accounted for.

I’m not going to say much more other than readjust your expectations and don’t go in believing you’re going to get a love story, but rather a life story. I haven’t felt feelings like this since Beaches and the fact that Rebecca Serle caused me to make the ugly crying face like Kim Kardashian means there’s no way she deserves less than 5 Stars. I avoided The Dinner List when it was released because I just wasn’t sure (still haven’t read that blurb, either). Now I think I probably should check it out.

Endless thanks to Atria and NetGalley for letting me wrap up 2019 with such an excellent story in exchange for this review.

PLEASE NOTE: This review contains spoilers.

I really enjoyed this book and read it within a day; I pretty much sat down and read it the whole way through, with the exception of minor disruptions. In regards to catching the reader's attention, this book gets a perfect score; however, the end of the novel was disappointing to me, which is why I did not score it higher.

The book begins with our main character, Dannie. Dannie is a hardworking lawyer who has just gotten engaged to the love of her life; everything seems perfect, until she has a dream of her life five years from now, where she is wearing a different engagement ring to a different man, whose passion overcomes her within the dream. When she wakes, she can't shake the feeling that the dream was real, which is especially true when she meets the man of her dream - her best friend's new boyfriend.

Her best friend, Bella, is arguably the most lovable character of the book, and I found myself drawn to her aura. I felt, as the story went on, that perhaps this was a love story between best friends. However, that didn't stop Dannie from kissing Bella's boyfriend while she was dying of cancer in the hospital... which gave me pause, and made me seriously dislike Dannie. 

This whole five years that Dannie experienced post-dream/premonition seemed almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and by the time she and this boyfriend get together, we realize it's just a one-night stand and she was experiencing grief of loss, as opposed to love. 

I wish her premonition / dream had been of her AS Bella, showing her that Bella was indeed loved by her boyfriend and had this beautiful life before she left it behind, as opposed to it actually having been Dannie doing something ultimately shitty. I think the ending was awful, and could've been a lot stronger. I'm very disappointed.

However, I give it the rating I did because it did keep me reading down to the last page.

As Dannie is interviewing for her dream job, the one she has wanted since she was little girl she is asked the question, where do you see yourself in five year. Where does Dannie see herself? She sees herself working in corporate law, she see herself married to her boyfriend David. The night David proposes Dannie wakes up the next morning in an apartment that is not hers, in Brooklyn, not Manhattan, with a ring on her finger that is not the one David gave her, a mystery guy she doesn't know but he knows her, and on the TV the date is five years in the future. Dannie tries to put this behind her. A couple of years later she meets this mystery man. The man is dating her best friend.

Synopsis: Dannie Cohen lands her dream job and gets engaged to her boyfriend but wakes up in a different apartment, with a different ring, and with a different man five years in the future. She wakes after an hour back in her current world and 4 1/2 years later she meets the man from her vision. ⁣
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Review: What is the last unputdownable book you read? I read 70% of this in about an hour and a half and could have easily finished this in one sitting but had to go to sleep. I adored The Dinner List earlier this year and was so excited when I read the synopsis for Rebecca Serle's newest. ⁣
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I have been going through a reading rut and was in the mood for this one. It was such a lovely, quick read. This is not just a romance novel but it is about friendship and what we do for our friends to love and support them. This one gutted me and I will be having a major book hangover from this one. Will be recommending this one and singing its praises! ⁣

Overachievers Dannie and David have their lives meticulously planned out. Dannie hopes to make partner at the most prestigious New York law firm and David is set to manage a successful hedge fund. They will live in a swanky Grammercy Park apartment with a view and summer in the Hamptons. Living together and recently engaged, their lives on right on track, until one day Dannie has a bizarre dream. For one solid hour she vividly sees herself five years in the future - with a different man, in another apartment and having the most intense sex of her life. Waking up shaken, she remembers every detail down to the mans name and the blue velvet of the living room chairs. Spooked by this premonition/dream Dannie works hard to forget this peculiar occurrence and continue on her rigid path that has zero wiggle room. More than four years later, with their engagement lingering, this memory comes full circle when Dannie meets Aaron, the man from her dream. Impossible or not, this secret is unbearable to keep as her best friend’s life is turned upside down and her very own heart falls to pieces. This fabulous, unpredictable, page turning romance had me guessing until the very end. Set to release in March 2020, a must to add to your reading list!

I am so thankful I was able to read this book early (I swapped for the physical arc and received a copy through netgalley!). This was one of my most anticipated books for 2020, and it did not disappoint. This is exactly the book I was in the mood for approaching New Years Eve - something warm, fast-paced, and a little emotional.
This book had vibes of Sex and the City, with a little bit of smut, but a lot of friendship. I really loved the writing style and loved seeing more of the city-life of New York City (I love books with city-life in them).
The reason this couldn't be a five star read for me, is the fact that this book isn't exactly what it seems. The synopsis makes this book seem like its another version of Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but honestly its not really about the time travel, or the moment the main character sees 5 years into the future. This book is all about whether you live life in the moment, and whether you truly love people in that current moment of your life (especially if you know what the future looks like, or if you make plans for the future).
This was an extremely cute book, and I read it within the span of a few hours (I love that its only 250 pages). I would definitely read another romance by this author.




SPOILERSSS
<spoiler> I really could have done without the romance with Aaron/Greg at the end - I feel like it was extremely messed up for Dannie to move so quickly from not being engaged anymore, to hopping into bed with her dead best friend's fiance. Like WHAT!? This part was just weird, messy, and the whole book I was wondering how the scene from 5 years was going to play out that way. </spoiler>