In Five Years
Ratings190
Average rating3.5
This was a cute story. It was interesting. You can make all the plans in the world, but things may not turn out the way you expected - for good or bad.
Really taps into the nuances of the human experience/experiment - friendship, grief, intimate relationships, work, love - to name a few.
i dont even know how to describe this lol. i imagined the ending to be predictable when i read the beginning and boi i was wrong holy crap. this is so different
This book is absolutely unexpected!! A story about love between friends, platonic soulmates. The plot twist i never saw coming. I just wish the chapters were dated to know exactly where we were in the timeline, I constantly felt myself wondering how many days until ~that~ day. Definitely recommend as a short read that still makes you feel everything!
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book and how invested I became in the relationships that developed. I had to put the book down to live my life but I kept thinking about how the author was going to make such a huge leap to bridge a really large gap that she had created. Needless to say, she did, and did it beautifully. I felt teary at a few spots. Great story from a book I'd normally never pick up.
This is not so much a love story, as an ode to New York City and to a unique, life-long friendship between two girls who first meet when they are eight and whose friendship grows and deepens during the next 25 years into something so meaningful and special it will tug at your heart. If you loved Me Before You, you will love In Five Years. It was so not the story I was expecting which delighted me in the best way. I loved both the women characters and the men in their lives, all of them trying the best they knew how to connect and love, and was also surprised in a good way at the ending. This isn't a male/female love story so much as a prose poem to a great bond between two women which made it unique and wonderful.
This book will stay with me for a while. It presents itself as an interesting twist on life - someone who has a definitive life plan set out for them gets a glimpse into the future. The story takes twists and turns with characters that you come to know and cheer for. Themes of friendship, true love, family, and more make this a great read that I highly recommend.
I went into this story expecting one thing: a romance. And I left it with a very different thing: a story of friendship.
So In Five Years isn't perhaps really a romance, though it has elements of that category. What starts as a seemingly average Hallmark-eqsue story grows increasingly more serious as it goes. This deeper exploration of love between friends and lovers is what gives this novel its gravitas through an otherwise absurd premise.
What alienated me most as a reader was all the wealth being thrown around. It's hard to connect with characters who are so fabulously wealthy. Personally, I could've done with all the bling.
I don't normally go for stories like this so the change of pace was refreshing. Spent the first half itching to know how it was going to unfold and the second half slowly mourning the inevitable conclusion. Also it was such a minor part of the story but I loved the Mindy Kaling bit.
This book left me with all the feels. It had me so invested that I finished it in one day. If you are expecting a romance story all I can say is it's so much more than that. It's about love, loss, friendship and how unexpected life turns out. Truly a remarkable story.
Dannie Kohan has her life all planned out, with an ideal job, an ideal boyfriend, an ideal life. Everything goes along just as Dannie has so carefully planned out until one night Dannie wakes from what feels like a terrible dream, a terrible dream set just five years in the future in which she has a different apartment and a completely different boyfriend. What is going on? Will this terrible dream become reality?
A fun read, with lots of unexpected twists and turns.
Books, Coffee & Passion
In Five Years was the opposite of what I was expecting. The blurb is a little deceiving to say the least. The premise is amazing and that's what made me read the book, I mean a girl got engaged to her boyfriend in 2020 and then suddenly wakes up with a different man and a different engagement ring 5 years in the future, an hour later she wakes up again in 2020... This sounds amazing, right? Unfortunately, in my opinion the execution wasn't. This is not a love story. I expected a light love story with some twists and turns, I wasn't expecting a story of friendship, loss and grief.
If you want to read this book and don't want spoilers, stop reading this review now.
One of my main problems while I was reading the book was that I couldn't empathize with any of these characters except with Bella, Dannie's best friend, but not even with her as a person, it was mostly because everything she was going through and had to endure. I couldn't stand Dannie, the main character, she was so judgy when it came to Bella's lifestyle and relationships. I disliked Dannie even more because she was so obsessed with her life plan. Her obsession went to the point she kept a loveless relationship just because she felt safe and wanted her plan, to marry in a few years and having kids a few years after that, to come true. She was narcissistic, self-entitled and annoying. Her boyfriend was just a bland character and Aaron... I couldn't get Aaron at all.I love plot twists when they're done right, I just felt like it wasn't the case here. Some of Aaron and Dannie's interactions felt forced in order to keep the readers thinking they might be interested in each other. Like the intense looks Aaron gave her occasionally. That meant nothing, it was only inserted in the plot as a way of keeping the readers guessing if they were going to fall in love. It didn't make any sense when the scene Dannie had dreamed in the beginning of the book was wrapped up. It just felt like lazy writing and it really bothered me. I couldn't get Aaron because I think his main role in the story was just to keep the readers believing in a possible romance between Dannie and him. His character development was nonexistent.
Overall, it was disappointing even though it was a page turner.
The writing is very, very good. The author does a great job of describing New York and views etc. However, this book was not for me. Had I known the real plot of this book I probably would not have picked it up. Very misleading synopsis with a real plot that just fails to deliver.
Did Dannie even change that much throughout this novel? I don't think she did and I really thought this was going to be like “Maybe In Another Life” mixed with a Scrooge like story. Just not for me.
I liked Bella and David but did not appreciate how David was treated.
What would you do if you saw a glimpse of your future? Would knowing it somehow lead you to make decisions that inevitably lead to its fulfillment? Rebecca Serle explores this concept in this charming and heartwarming novel.
I went into this book thinking the main characters would be Dannie and her boyfriend; however, the book is really about the love between two best friends, Dannie and Bella. Dannie struggles to figure out the path of her love life, but the one constant and fulfilling relationship in her life is her friendship with Bella. These two characters are so different, but they balance each other. Serle does a great job of creating this contrast. Some might say that the two women are stereotypes, one grounded and serious while the other is free-spirited and laid back; however, it's not bothersome to me. I believe they are simply examples of real women, even if they are maybe portrayed to the extreme.
The plot line takes a turn about 60% into the book. It did not end up being the story I expected it to be, but that is not a bad thing. I ended up liking it more because of the new direction it went in. While some of the plot developments are a bit cliche, I still thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience. It was a fast, engaging read that I would definitely recommend to my fellow readers.
For anyone looking for a book about love and friendship that will both break and warm the heart, In Five Years is a great choice.
In Five Years was a heart-tugging story about love, friendship & taking the sourest lemon life has to offer & being able to turn it into something resembling lemonade. (yes, that was a this is us reference bc it fit perfectly