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Romance
Adult Fiction
Book Review Rating: Five Stars out of Five
Have you ever thought about your life and how it will go down to the month and year?
Well, Type-A Dannie Kohan has and does. She plans everything, her job, her engagement and even when she’ll get married. It all seems to be on track until she falls asleep after getting engaged, waking five years in the future, with a different ring on her finger, in a different apartment, and a different man in her home.
It was just a dream she tells herself over and over again, but life reminds her it can’t be and that sometimes, you simply aren’t able to plan everything out.
This form of fun does not come naturally to me, and therefore feels impossible to engage in. I am constantly trying to learn the rules, only to realize that the people who win don’t seem to follow any.
In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
This book surprised me; there are twists in its tale. The writing is human and unexpected. You think this book will go one way, but then another chapter is read, and you see a different ending altogether. It’s a book that will keep you on your toes, twisting your stomach as you hope what you’re thinking won’t come to anything.
It was a random pick, with a catchy book cover (I know, I know —don’t judge book covers), and a premise that made me excitedly curious. It’s been a long time I felt the thrill of reading a book like I did with this one, and that feeling doubled after reading the first few chapters. It had tripled by the half-way point.
On paper—or the blurb—this book tells you it’s going to be one thing, but it so much more, and that’s refreshing. It’s so rare for me to find myself completely caught off guard, but I was with each new piece of information; it’s also uncommon for me to be sucked completely into a book, to not have the will even to put it down, but this one had me gripped.
“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.”
In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
I’m desperate to keep this spoiler-free, so I’ll try to.
It’s a book on planned happiness that never becomes of anything. It’s a moment you see in the future, and panic about it occurring; the dream you’re waiting to come true, not knowing how it will manifest itself or if it even if it will. It haunts you because you’re human, and likewise to some of the more painful plot points in this book.
And then, on top of all of that, it’s pain. It’s heart-wrenching pain you don’t expect. It’s one thing after another that leaves you dreading what life is, and how Dannie is even going to find the courage to continue, but she does, only comforted by numbers and work.
Some may find her challenging, they won’t be able to relate, but she flung herself out of the book at me and latched on never wanting to let go. Her nails gripped into my arms that day and swore she’d never let go, and truthfully I didn’t want her too. She was vastly more interesting than some of the main characters I’ve ever read, and she’s also so very multi-layered, which can be hard to do in this type of story—especially in two hundred-odd pages.
But all of that is an hour from now. Now, on the other side of midnight, we do not yet know what is coming.
In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
I wish, as an author, I had written this book. Which I think is the highest praise I can ever say about a book—in my opinion, of course. I wished I’d been clever enough to think of this plot, to write such well-thought-out realistic characters that burn themselves into your brain. I also really wish that one day I get to tell Rebecca how much her book affected me because it did.
For me, a five-star book is when you come away from it in a daze. You have a book hangover, as they’re so often called. You’re surprised at the ending, at the same time as desperately trying to put yourself together again. It’s also when you find yourself unable to put the book down.
That’s my criteria, there’s no other key that works for me, and this book ticked all of them off.
I can’t wait to reread this book, and I’m very proud to add it to my bookshelf.
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