S. F. Prescott

Heartfelt, beautiful, and compelling.

Rebecca Serle is the New York Times bestselling author of Expiration Dates, One Italian Summer, In Five Years, The Dinner List, and the young adult novels The Edge of Falling and When You Were Mine. Serle also developed the hit TV adaptation Famous in Love, based on her YA series of the same name. She is a graduate of USC and The New School and lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

Published March 10th, 2020.

I just discovered Rebecca Serle’s novel, In Five Years, and I’m officially a fan girl. I mentioned last year that it had been a while since I’d cried while reading fiction, years in fact. I love when a book can pull at a part of me that’s buried so deep it evokes a strong reaction. And this book was the one!

The famous question: Where do you see yourself in five years? Is answered in this beautiful story about two best friends living in New York City, trying to have it all when fate intervenes, upending their lives.

I have zero criticism about this book. I do not read a lot in this genre but after this book I know that’s about to change. The setting, New York City, was immersive and I loved reading about old neighborhoods I used to frequent when I lived there. The characters were relatable, especially the central relationship between Dannie and Bella. Their friendship instantly transported me to happy memories of my own. The story flowed through concise chapters and the pace held steady up to the last page. I was hooked from beginning to end! I loved the misdirection of the dream Dannie has in the beginning, and how that idea of her future kept me turning the pages, curious how it would all unfold. The twist felt realistic when it happened, and the final scene in the deli was so satisfying. Bella’s words to Dannie in my head, “Love.” It gave me goosebumps.

“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 by Rebecca Serle

Read. 👏🏼 This. 👏🏼 Book.👏🏼

5/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

For readers who enjoy stories about friendship and love which pack an emotional gut punch.

Synopsis:

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.