IN FIVE YEARS: a book about love (not in the way you think it is)

I'm writing this draft at 4:44 am after finishing Rebecca Serle's profound tale, cover-to-cover in under 5 hours

Another raw review. I’m beginning to realize that maybe this is the genre I will love the most (tragedy and loss) because my ability to feel - especially on account of other people - is remarkable. I honestly don’t care if you read this review in its entirety — my motivation to write this review is very selfish — I only needed to park my lava-like feelings somewhere. The long and short of it is, if you like to feel stripped naked emotionally, this book is it.

In Five Years, by Rebecca Serle, was my 5 pm purchase from Rizzoli today. Here’s how it ended up in this 5 am draft: After a long walk from Bryant Park to sunny Madison Square Park, I wandered into my favorite bookstore for my next fiction read (after Demon Copperhead). I picked up more than a handful of Goodreads recommendations and tossed them around from pile to pile, doubting if any of them would hold my attention all the way. Without a book club, there’s little accountability, so it wasn’t so much the books I was doubting — it was me. Ultimately, I walked over to the billing counter with what looked like a romance novel. A good old love story, I thought.

I read a few pages in the park, started a conversation with an animation student sketching beside me on the bench, and made my way home just in time for dinner at my best friend’s. This was our third time together in the last 24 hours, so it was business as usual. Before I went to hers, I had gotten through about 30 pages and was HOOKED. Good sign, I thought.

I returned home at 11 pm and immediately jumped into bed to read a few more chapters of Dannie’s (love) story before calling it a night. It’s now 5 am, and I’ve finished lapping up Serle’s poignant tale of how-easily-life-can-override-the-most-meticulous-plans.

The story follows Dannie, a corporate lawyer in her late twenties, living her dream life in NYC, in a healthy relationship with her boyfriend, David, in a 25-year-old friendship with her Bella, and in an undetermined relationship with an architect named Aaron.

Serle has a skill for effortlessly catapulting you from everyone’s beloved West Village restaurants to the driest corporate offices on the UES. She pays attention to detail like a designer — how she describes every ensemble is like how they taught us in Fashion school. Her visual cues are stronger than you can imagine, so it’s hard to turn away from the book.

“I'm wearing a new Theory suit with a silk high-necked camisole underneath. Nothing frivolous. All severity.”

Dannie has what her therapist describes as a premonition, and that’s the story’s premise: for an hour, she wakes up 5 years in the future with Aaron (an unidentified man) instead of her new fiancée, David. The clock strikes midnight, and she’s back to her life as she knew it. For the next 5 years, the book follows a series of events that you cannot shake off. I don’t know how Dannie ever moved on, but the author provides some respite insofar as saying, she does in fact move on.

I can’t say much more than that without giving away spoilers, so I’ll only say this much: if you like to feel, get the book.

For the past 45 minutes, my heart has been tugged at in every possible direction, but especially in the direction of my best friend, Mridu. My heart hurts for not being there for her in times I should have, for the times she’s been there for me; for how many times we’ve held each other at our weakest. It hurts to think that though we are lucky to be so close to each other now, life may not always grant us that privilege. One day, I will have to get past heartbreak without her embrace and find a way to piece myself together — myself. One day, she will need me to cry with her, and I will not be around to do it. I can’t un-read the book and un-think this thought. Rebecca Serle is both to blame and thank.

This photo was taken in bed at 4:30 am, when I put the book down after sobbing for forty-five full minutes.

Briefly, the book also reminded me of a man I loved so very much (what feels like a decade ago, we were so young and naive) and was the reason I moved here to New York. Here’s a little excerpt that made me think of not our time together but how our time together ended:

“He's asking me to prove him wrong. And I could. I can do that if I wanted to, I could convince him. I could keep crying! could reach for him. I could say all the things I know he needs to hear. I could lay out the evidence. That I dream about me marrying him. That every time he walks into a room my stomach tightens. I could tell him the things I love about him: the curl of his hair and how warm his torso is, and how I feel at home in his heart. But I can't. It would be a lie. And he deserves more than that--he deserves everything. This is the thing, the only thing, I have to offer him. The truth. Finally.”

The book ends with a chapter called ‘After,’ which I think was Serle’s way of giving her readers a minute to process their grief. It helped. Somewhat. 

But she ends the book with a moving line that I hope stays with you whether you choose to read it or not: “Even after midnight, especially after midnight, continue moving toward that which is moving toward you.”

This is the fastest I’ve ever read a book, and it makes me proud of how far I’ve come with reading. I don’t think I will ever stop. Maybe, I’ll write my own book some day.