Not Expected, a Book Review of IN FIVE YEARS by Rebecca Serle

The back cover of this book reads, “an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.” The book blurb plays fair with the reader. In Five Years isn’t a romance by any stretch of the imagination. This book covers a friendship as a love story. Serle develops two female characters who lean on each other from their grade-school days and struggle through professional and personal griefs and triumphs. Serle’s evocation of the friendship between Dannie and Bella is one of the reasons to read this book.

In Five Years begins with a perfect couple planning their perfect life in a completely predictable manner. David and Dannie are settled and happy. They are not in love, but they love each other. In fact, Dannie, in the first pages of the book, is charmingly well organized and analytic and supremely unconcerned about the goo of relationships. She is a colorful mix of the Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon and Joan Hickson’s rendition of Miss Marple. Dannie is not much for emotions, unlike her best friend Bella. Dannie is all about work, schedules and doing what’s next in her plan. She presumes that her mate David is on the same path and equally comfortable. By the end of Chapter two, Dannie and David are engaged and celebrating. Bella is in the loop cheering Dannie on.

In chapter three, Dannie has a short dream/prophetic vision and the book changes course. The reader is supposed to take the prophetic vision seriously, but it is a difficult jump. The book is clearly not science fiction or fantasy fiction, so this prophetic vision never quite seats itself. Instead, the main character becomes an unreliable narrator. The switch to suspended realism in an otherwise down-to-earth book and with a particularly down-to-earth main character upends the groundwork already laid by the author in the first two chapters. The reader no longer knows how to read the book. To complicate matters, down-to-earth Dannie becomes a ‘hot mess.’ Remarkably she still performs her work to her very high standards even while her world is upside down.

Without spoiling the book for those who haven’t read it, the ending seems less real than the vision. It was set forth to solve the mystery of the vision with little heed to the characters.

The book is a quick read and the plot twists and turns in ways that keep the reader reading. It is not a book to return to, but the mystery is satisfied and the open ending works.

Read In Five Years for the characterization of Dannie and the crazy plot twists. Thanks for reading.