In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

 

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⭐ 1.5/5 — In Five Years by Rebecca Serle 📅 “Wait… What Was the Point?”

👉 Buy In Five Years on Amazon 🛍️ (affiliate link)

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⚠️ Trigger Warnings

This book contains:

• Cancer (ovarian) and death from illness

• Grief and loss

• Infidelity / betrayal (emotional)

• Hospital scenes and end-of-life care

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📝 Quick Take

I’ll be honest — I closed this book and literally said out loud: “...so what was the point?” 😅

The premise hooked me: a hyper-organized woman sees a glimpse of her life 5 years into the future — and it’s not at all what she planned. Intriguing! But somewhere between the time-travel twist, magical realism, terminal illness storyline, and awkward almost-love triangle, the whole thing unraveled for me.

Plus… there are plot holes you could drive a moving truck through 🚚💍.

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📚 Overview: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

Published in March 2020, In Five Years became a New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America Book Club pick. It’s marketed as a love story, but really it focuses on the deep platonic bond between two best friends, Dannie and Bella.

Rebecca Serle is known for blending emotional contemporary fiction with a hint of magical realism (One Italian Summer, Expiration Dates), but this one left me scratching my head.

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🚨 Spoiler Warning: Full Plot Summary Below 🚨

👩‍💼 The Life Plan

Dannie Kohan is a hyper-organized corporate lawyer who lives by the rules. She’s engaged to David, works at her dream law firm, and has her future mapped out to the minute.

On the night she gets engaged, she falls asleep… and wakes up five years in the future — in a different apartment, next to a different man. There’s passion, emotion, and a sense of inevitability. When she wakes back up, she brushes it off as a dream — but she can’t quite shake it.

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👫 Enter Aaron (…Uh Oh)

Four and a half years later, Bella — Dannie’s dazzling, impulsive best friend — introduces her to her new boyfriend: Aaron Gregory. Yep, the same guy from the “dream.” 🫣

Dannie immediately panics. She discourages Bella from buying the apartment she saw in her vision, suddenly rushes to plan her wedding (after four years of foot-dragging), and tries to control every variable.

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🏥 The Twist

Bella thinks she’s pregnant, but instead, she’s diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer. The pregnancy test was a false positive. Cue heartbreak.

Bella’s treatment puts a strain on her friendship with Dannie, who tries to micromanage her care until Bella tells her to back off. Months of silence follow.

Meanwhile, Dannie’s engagement with David is unraveling. She admits she doesn’t love him the way he deserves.

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💍 Engagement Ring Shenanigans

Here’s where the continuity errors start to pile up:

• Dannie wears Bella’s engagement ring on her middle finger, even though the book previously made a point about Bella’s tiny hands. Realistically, it wouldn’t have fit.

• Dannie “sees” the ring years earlier in her vision but doesn’t recognize it when Bella gets engaged. Really? A canary diamond isn’t exactly forgettable.

• And in Chapter 12, she describes David’s green eyes — but the green eyes belong to Aaron. David’s are brown. 🤦‍♀️

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💔 Goodbye, Bella

Bella’s health worsens, and eventually, she dies surrounded by loved ones. Dannie is devastated — as expected.

Shortly after the funeral, Dannie and Aaron go back to the apartment (the one from the vision), drink too much, and share a kiss. YES, a kiss. With her best friend’s fiancé. While Bella’s body is barely cold. I know this book is about “grief,” but this was just… ick. 🫢

The “big reveal” is that the overwhelming emotion Dannie felt in the vision wasn’t romantic love for Aaron, but grief for Bella. This is meant to be poignant, but honestly, it felt forced and muddled. Dannie already experienced childhood grief when she lost her brother; it doesn’t make sense that she’d confuse it with romantic love.

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🏁 The Ending

Dannie and David go their separate ways. She moves into the apartment Bella bought for her, carrying on her friend’s legacy. She does not end up with Aaron (thank goodness), but the whole “5 years later” vision plays out — except the meaning is “surprise, it was grief!” 😬

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🤔 Final Thoughts

Look, the beginning is interesting, and the premise had me curious to see how it would all unfold. But the execution is messy, and some of the plot choices left me baffled.

The friendship between Dannie and Bella is touching at times, but undercut by the bizarre Aaron subplot. And the plot holes (ring sizes, eye colors, magical grief misinterpretation) didn’t help.

⭐ Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars. A bit more than 1 star only because the first few chapters were compelling. But overall, a disappointment.

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📚 If You Liked This (or Want Something Better)

If you’re into emotional contemporary fiction with a touch of magical realism, try:

• ✨ One Day by David Nicholls — for time-spanning love done right.

• 💔 Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid — parallel timelines that actually make sense.

• 👯 Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah — if what you wanted was a powerful story about friendship and loss and a similar feeling of, what's the point?