Review: In Five Years (by Rebecca Serle)

My Rating:  3 stars

Once again, I seem to be the outlier with this book, as I wasn't as enamored with it as most other readers were.  It's not that I didn't enjoy reading this – certain parts of it were well-done and overall, I appreciated the different, interesting direction that the author Rebecca Serle ultimately took the story.  For me, the strongest aspect of the story was the friendship between Dannie and her childhood best friend Bella –the way their relationship was written, the bond that they shared, it was one that many of us who also grew up with a best childhood friend could relate to (on a personal level, it reminded me of my relationship with my own childhood BFF).  But with that said though, it's precisely because Dannie and Bella's friendship was portrayed so strongly that the entire story arc involving Aaron felt a bit contrived to me.  In a sense, it felt as though Aaron's role was created merely to complicate the plot rather than for any other significant purpose.  It's kind of hard to explain without giving away the ending, which I don't want to do obviously, so instead, I will say only that some parts of the story felt "gimmicky" (which is something I can't stand), to the point that after finishing the book, I was left with a feeling of having been misled.  There were also moments where the threads of the story didn't blend together as smoothly, which made it feel like I was reading two different books at times.

The other thing was that I didn't really feel an emotional connection to any of the characters, which was surprising given the marketing of this book as a "tug at your heartstrings" love story.  There were actually plenty of emotional scenes in the story, but for some reason, I didn't feel anything when I read them.  I'm not sure if this was because of the way the characters were written or the setup of the scenes was insufficient, I just know that I was expecting to feel more than I actually did.

Overall, this was a decent read, one that I liked well enough but didn't "love" as expected.  Regardless, I'm still interested in reading this author's other works, especially her previous novel The Dinner List, which has a fascinating premise and has been on my TBR for while.

Received ARC from Atria Books via NetGalley.