In Five Years Review: Back-of-Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

 

A Good Morning America, FabFitFun, and Marie Claire Book Club Pick

 

“In Five Years is as clever as it is moving, the rare read-in-one-sitting novel you won’t forget.” —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

 

​Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

 

Where do you see yourself in five years?

 

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.

 

She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

 

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.

My Thoughts

I cannot remember who it was but one of my friends gave me this book after they read it. I love when people do that, but I kept it on my shelf for like…a year or two before finally feeling like I wanted to give it a shot.

I cracked it open and immediately thought – Holy cow! I don’t know why I waited so long! In Five Years hooked me right from the beginning. I started it before bed one night and had a really hard time putting it down to get some sleep. Then the next day I was a passenger in a car for a 10-hour road trip and decided to try reading. This might have been the first time in my adult life that I was able to read in a moving car! And it was a welcome miracle because read I did. I finished it in half the car ride.

To be fair, it was only 250 pages, so plenty of people could breeze through it. But it was really just so darn good that I did not want to put it down to talk or sleep or do anything else!

The writing was really good. It’s written in the present tense which was a welcome change from recent books. It’s also all from only the main character’s point of view – again different than recent reads that alternate to other characters.

I like that the beginning of the book points you in a direction so you think you know what’s going to happen and that the story is going to be a simple journey of how they get there…but it’s so much more than that. It ends up in a way you don’t expect.

The events that happen are sometimes difficult to read about because of all the emotion the author puts into them. I found myself crying during more than one part – in the backseat of a car filled with other people, mind you!

All the characters felt interesting, real, and relatable. The dialogue was natural and easy to read. And the settings were perfect – easy to imagine and an interesting part of the story.

I just loved everything about this book, especially the two friends. And the road trip i was on was actually to go see two of my best friends get married. So it was really fitting for me. 

Favorite Quotes from In Five Years

“It’s always the best, the greatest, the most fun she’s ever had. Life is an upward escalator [for her].”

 

“I think sacrifice is in direct opposition to manifestation. If you want your dreams you should look for abundance, not scarcity.”

 

“Sometimes kindness under pressure can feel like a slight.”

 

“At the end of the day, law comes down to what is written, and we do the writing.”

 

“I am constantly trying to learn the rules, only to realize that the people who win don’t seem to follow any.”

 

“I think that maybe that is what love is. Not the absence of space but the acknowledgment of it, the thing that lives between the parts, the thing that makes it possible not to be one, but to be different, to be two.”

 

“You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.”

 

“I used to think that the present determined the future. That if I worked hard and long I’d get the things I wanted. The job, the apartment, the life. That the future was simply a mound of clay waiting to be told by the present what form to take. But that isn’t true. It can’t be.”

 

“I have been asked so many times if I needed help that I have been allowed to forget the question, the significance of it. I see, now, the way the love in my life has woven into a tapestry that I’ve been blessed enough to ignore. But not now, not anymore.”

In Conclusion

I absolutely loved In Five Years!  5 stars and no complaints from me. Except it maybe could have been longer, as I didn’t want it to ever end! It was so well written and so amazing.

I would recommend this literally anyone and everyone! I can’t think of a single book lover or casual fiction reader who wouldn’t enjoy this story. Consider giving it as a gift to your friends or family! 

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