Book Review: In Five Years

In Five Years, by Rebecca Serle

• Reality of relationships

• Expectations vs reality

• Don’t read for a happy ending...

• 4 Stars

The synopsis of this book made me glance around and wonder if someone was writing about me... I'm a planner, by profession and nature, and constantly make lists and populating my calendar constantly. Always trying to be prepared for each day and every instance. Sometimes that’s just not possible, and this book captures that so perfectly.

This is a beautiful story of love, friendship, loss, and the decisions that shape us as humans.

Dannie in the opening chapter (and beyond) reminded me a lot of myself with her to-do list and ambition and expectations of others. So when the book started to make me ugly cry and gasp in shock, wine and tissues weren’t enough to comfort me.

Trying to have your sight set on goals, and being able to understand you never know what the next days may bring - that’s a tough balance for me, and Dannie.

We have a dream board and a planner and yearly goals.

Then we have unfortunate timing, the death of a loved one, a freak accident.

And then we stare at the pages and expectations we laid out for ourselves and realize we’re no longer that person.

For Dannie, as the story unfolds it was so amazing how her unwavering dedication to her career became so easily clouded by everything happening with Bella. That we think we can do it all and survive it all, until we can’t.

Spoiler Alert - stop scrolling now!

For Dannie and her fiancé, the idea of the grand plan and what love is was very raw and real to me. The way they started out and how the author had them slowly fade was almost too realistic. Sometimes it isn’t that sudden fight or break up or life changing decision. Sometimes you are drifting along in the same place, at the same address, in the same routine. But you’re not in love anymore. That things change, people change, time passes and we look up one day and have a feeling we need to be true to ourselves starting now. Or we wonder how this happened and do we end something when there isn’t anything wrong, when no one is treating us poorly - but we aren’t really in love anymore.

Serle captures a common feeling yet unusual topic in literary relationships, and does it so well. The fade out, the drift apart, the I don’t want to hurt you, I am not not happy with you, but I can’t be in this gray area of almost love anymore. Life was there to be lived by us, but now life has escaped us. Life was something we were going to take on together, but it’s taken us seeing more of life to know we aren’t doing it together anymore.

I really loved this theme of the book, if you can’t tell, and I clung to the pages and tissues multiple times over it. Feeling seen, heard, validated, and heartbroken for myself and others and the characters.

My Synopsis: Dannie is in the fast paced climb in her career, her relationship, and loves keeping up with her bestie as she goes. So when an all-too-real dream rattles her steady, well planned plans she starts to second guess things. What she believed of herself and what she knew of her best friend, Bella, started unraveling. How much can change in a night, a week, a year...or five is truly amazing.

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