As in her debut, The Dinner List, Rebecca Serle adds a splash of magic to In Five Years while grounding the story in reality. Dannie Kohan's life is unfolding exactly as she's planned. On the same day she nails an interview for her dream job, her boyfriend, David, proposes. She falls asleep that evening and wakes up in an unrecognizable apartment with a strange man, and, shockingly, realizes this is where she is in five years. Which is impossible, because it looks nothing like her plans.
Serle's novel then brings Dannie back to her current life, with the young woman unable to shake what she saw and what it means. It felt too real to be a dream--was it a premonition? Four and a half years pass, and she and David remain unmarried, supposedly because their high-powered lives have allowed little time to plan a wedding. Until Dannie meets her best friend Bella's new boyfriend, potentially "the one"--and he's the man from Dannie's vision years earlier. Soon after, Bella shares more big news, and Dannie rushes to get married to prevent her foresight from coming true and ruining everyone's lives.
Dannie and David make more money than most millennials and Bella is a trust-fund socialite/artist, but they remain sympathetic as they strive to find romance, rewarding careers and a sense of security in an uncertain world. The moving love relationship at the center isn't between obvious suspects; Serle's understated prose allows heartbreaks to resonate quietly and the final note of hope to land beautifully. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd