In Five Years
“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.”
Hello!
Long time no see, but I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about a book that emotionally destroyed me.
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle came out in March 2020, and I remember it got a lot of buzz. I’m not going to lie to you, when I first read the summary, I really wasn’t sure this was going to be for me. Boy, was I wrong.
We start this story following Dannie while she is on top of her world. She nailed the interview for her dream job at a prestigious NYC law firm, and she just got engaged to her attractive and practical boyfriend. Needless to say, she’s feeling pretty satisfied, knowing that her five-year plan was falling into place perfectly. She and David will get married, move into their dream apartment, and her career will take off from there. What more could she want?
Well…
On the night of her engagement, she comes home a little tipsy—happens to the best of us—and she lies down on the couch for a nap. She wakes up to find that she’s in a different apartment, in a different neighborhood, wearing a different engagement ring than the one David just gave her, and there’s an attractive stranger cooking her dinner. See looks at the TV to find that it’s five years in the future from the day of her engagement to David. She’s confused and groggy, but she goes with it, spending an hour in this strange alternate universe version of her life. After falling asleep in this world, she wakes up back in the present, still on the couch in the apartment she shares with her fiance.
From there, we follow Dannie through the next five years as we all—Dannie included—wonder how or if she’s going to end up in that alternate universe place from her dream.
And…that’s all I’m going to say for now.
My favorite thing about this book is it was not at all what I thought it would be. If you haven’t read it, you can probably guess what’s going to happen next from after the summary above, but the way it all came together was incredibly unexpected and well done. I highly recommend going into this book without knowing much at all because the less you know upfront, the greater impact the end will have on you.
I also loved the relationships in this book, even more so than I initially thought I would since I had trouble relating to Dannie from the start. I found her relationship with David to be fairly realistic, which was refreshing as someone who maybe watched a little too much Bridgerton over the holiday break. While the book starts when their relationship is hitting a high note, they encounter a number of roadblocks and make plenty of mistakes as they try to blend their separate lives together, something I found very relatable. More importantly, I loved the friendship between punctual and idealistic Dannie and free-spirited Bella. It’s one of those friendships that shouldn’t work because they are so different, but it does because they have such a believable history and so much love for each other. I loved getting to know both of them through the plot of the story and Dannie’s memories of them growing up together. There are many little scenes, especially during the first half of the book, that set up their friendship and show the reader why they’re so close, and they make Dannie and Bella’s reactions to various events in the second half much more believable.
“I make her life smooth and solid. She makes mine bright and dazzling. This seems fair. A good trade.”
One of my favorite scenes involves Dannie seeing Bella in a new way and appreciating their contrasting personalities more than ever before. Throughout the story, Bella is described as flighty and irresponsible, with Dannie always there to offer her stability and steer her in the “right” direction. As Dannie and Bella are hit by a number of challenges—I’m being vague for a reason—Dannie shifts her perspective and realizes that Bella simply sees the the world differently than Dannie, and that in itself is her source of strength.
Overall, I’d definitely recommend this book, though as I’ve said before, be prepared for a good cry. I read the majority of it late at night, and when I finished it, all I wanted to do was cry on the phone with my best friend, and it was, well, 2 a.m. Personally, I think this is the perfect book to snuggle up with on the couch with rain pouring outside and a fire going. Cozy, right?
What to Read Next:
If you’re up for another good cry—you do you, I guess—then I recommend One Day in December by Josie Silver. Similar to In Five Years, this book takes place over 10 years after a pivotal opening scene, where a meet-cute doesn’t go as planned.
If you’re looking for another example of time travel with a twist, Landline by Rainbow Rowell is a great choice. It’s about a woman whose marriage is in trouble, and when she has to skip visiting her in-laws for the holidays for her job, she doesn’t expect her husband to take their kids on the trip without her. Now alone for the holidays, she discovers a magical landline that allows her to talk to her now-husband when they were young, and she wonders if she can use it to fix their problems before they start.
