Title: IN FIVE YEARS
Expected publication: 10 March 2020
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!
“Love doesn’t require
a future.” (Rebecca Serle, In Five Years)
Book Description:
Where do you see yourself in five years?
When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.
But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.
After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.
That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.
When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.
But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.
After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.
That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.
My musings:
Welcome to my first 5-star read of 2020!I have just turned
the last page of IN FIVE YEARS and tears are streaming down my face. What an
emotional roller coaster rode this book has been!
It’s difficult to review a book that has managed to connect
with me on a very deep emotional level without giving away all the whys and
hows that would spoil things for other readers. You know from the blurb that
main protagonist Dannie, a lawyer and all-around super organised person who is
always in control of every situation, falls asleep on the eve of her engagement
to David and has a dream. In the dream, she is in a strange apartment, with a
strange man, at a date five years in the future. It all appears so real to her
that when she wakes up she still feels shaken. Who is the stranger? Why was she
not with David? The dream continues to haunt her for the next four and a half
years, casting a dark shadow on her life whenever she thinks about it, even
though she tries very hard to dismiss it. Until the moment she meets the man
from her dream in real life...
I will leave it at that. But make no mistake, it’s all a lot
more complicated than this premise may seem. Also, don’t mistake the book for a
romance, because even though love features in it (in its many forms), the main
story is about friendship. It’s also about the things we can control and the
ones we can’t, destiny, and about taking things in the right context. As I a m
writing this, I know how lame it sounds and how badly I am expressing myself
here – sorry! Take it from me when I say
that the story will surprise you, steal your heart and make you cry. As someone
who likes to be in control of my own fate, I found a lot of gentle wisdom in
its pages that made me pause and reflect. And even though I am a lot older and
a very different personality to Dannie, her character really resonated with me
and I felt ALL the emotions.
Summary:
If you like books that steal through your defences, make you
think, surprise you and let you feel a million different emotions, then this
book may just be right for you. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for
when I picked it up, and I’m glad I dove into it blindly because it took me
totally by surprise and carried me in its wake. A book that can elicit such
deep emotion will always get five stars from me. I can’t wait to read more from
this author!
Thank
you to Netgalley and Hachette Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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