In Five Years: A Novel

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 modern classic and powerful 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.

Rebecca Serle is the New York Times bestselling author of Once and Again, Expiration Dates, One Italian Summer, In Five Years, The Dinner List, and the young adult novels The Edge of Falling and When You Were Mine. Serle also developed the hit TV adaptation Famous in Love, based on her YA series of the same name.She is a graduate of USC and The New School and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. Find out more at RebeccaSerle.com

Praise for In Five Years:

“What would you do if you glimpsed your life five years from now—and found that it was different, in every way, from what you hoped for and expected? Rebecca Serle pairs this inspired premise with deft, propulsive prose and characters who feel as real as friends. 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

“In Five Years is a profound tale of unconditional love and anguish with a touch of the mystical and mysterious.”
—New York Journal of Books

“You'll devour it.”
—Marie Claire

“Rebecca Serle has a way of blending a little bit of magic into the every day.”
—HelloGiggles

“Rebecca Serle has a knack for writing beautiful stories that speak to the anxiety of forging a new road for oneself, of being brave enough to start all over.”
—Bustle

“Be prepared for deep emotions, a few laughs, and possibly a few tears as well. Reading this book is truly an experience.”
—Seattle Book Review

“Serle takes a fairly generic rom-com setup and turns it into something much deeper in this captivating exploration of friendship, loss, and love.” —Booklist

"The novel is about the real meaning of love and friendship and the bonds that tie us all together." ― Good Morning America

“Heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic in all the ways that make a book impossible to put down, I fell in love with this story. In five years, I will still be thinking about this beautiful novel.” —JAMIE FORD, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“I adored In Five Years, it’s so poignant and tender. It broke my heart, such an unusual idea executed brilliantly, I didn’t see that twist coming! I’m a sucker for great love stories, and this one is just lovely. A keeper on my shelf!” —JOSIE SILVER, author of #1 New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick One Day in December

“In Five Years is more than just a love story; it’s a half dozen of them, none quite what you expect. Heartwarming, heartbreaking, and hard to put down, it’s a novel about romance, friendship, the magic of good bagels, and what happens after you get everything you always wanted.” —LAURIE FRANKEL, author of New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Hello Sunshine pick This Is How It Always Is

“A heartwarming portrait of a broken heart finding a little healing magic.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Serle’s whimsical tale is book club catnip.” —Publishers Weekly

“When smart, thoughtful writing pairs with a compelling, ingenious plot I am hooked and so very happy. It’s been a long time since I read a novel in two sittings, but as soon as I started In Five Years, I was a goner. Loved it! Brava, Rebecca Serle.” —ELINOR LIPMAN, author of Good Riddance

“I just finished In Five Years and—my heart—oh! What a clever, beautiful, special book. The writing is stunning, the concept is so original—it just has everything going for it. I loved e

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle is a moving, bittersweet story about love, fate, friendship, and the difference between the life we plan and the life we’re meant to live. It follows Dannie Kohan, a sharply ambitious, highly organized lawyer in New York City who measures her life in goals, timelines, and checklists. At the start of the book, she has everything seemingly lined up: a coveted job at a prestigious law firm, a clear five year plan mapped out, and a proposal from her reliable, loving boyfriend David. She’s the kind of person who believes that if you work hard enough and make the right choices, you can control how your future looks. For Dannie, security and predictability are not just preferences—they’re necessities.

On the night she gets engaged to David, Dannie’s life appears to be perfectly on track. She feels a calm satisfaction, not so much swept away by romance as reassured that she’s doing what she’s “supposed” to do. That night, though, something inexplicable happens. She falls asleep and wakes up in what feels like another reality: a different apartment, a different ring on her finger, and a different man beside her—someone she’s never met before. It’s four and a half years in the future, exactly five years from her engagement night, and everything in the scene is intensely vivid. The man’s name is Aaron, the apartment has small, detailed touches that feel like they belong to her, and the emotional connection she feels in that strange hour is powerful. Dannie spends just one hour in this future before waking up back in her present, in her familiar life with David, as if nothing has happened.

The experience is so real that it shakes her deeply. Dannie, who usually trusts logic and reason, can’t easily file this away as a dream. She remembers the smell of the air, the feel of Aaron’s touch, the layout of the apartment, the ring on her finger. At the same time, she doesn’t believe in fate or mysticism. So she does what she always does—she tries to push it aside, bury herself in work, and carry on with her plan. She keeps her engagement to David, focuses on her career, and tells almost no one about what she saw. But the vision lingers in the back of her mind, a quiet, unnerving question: if her life is so carefully controlled, how could something like that be possible?

A central figure in Dannie’s life is her best friend Bella. Where Dannie is structured and cautious, Bella is free spirited, romantic, and impulsive. She comes from wealth, moves through life with a kind of glittering chaos, and is always chasing art, experiences, and big feelings. Their friendship is a balancing act—they’ve known each other since they were young, and their differences have always been a point of contrast and comfort. Bella throws herself into relationships and adventures; Dannie grounds herself in contracts and schedules. Despite their opposite styles, they love each other fiercely. That bond becomes the emotional center of the book, even more than any romantic relationship.

Years pass, and Dannie sticks to her plan. She advances in her career, maintains her steady relationship with David, and keeps moving forward in the way she has always envisioned. But four and a half years later, something happens that brings the dream crashing back into her reality. Bella introduces Dannie to her new boyfriend—a man she’s deeply in love with. His name is Aaron. He is the same man from Dannie’s vision. The moment Dannie sees him, she recognizes him instantly, down to the way he looks and the way he carries himself. This is the man she was in bed with in that future apartment five years from her engagement night. The shock of it is overwhelming.

Dannie is thrown into a moral and emotional storm. She cares deeply for Bella and wants her to be happy. At the same time, the arrival of Aaron in her actual life makes her question everything she thought she knew. Was the vision showing her a future that’s about to happen? Does it mean she will betray Bella? Does it mean her engagement to David is doomed? She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and she doesn’t want to believe she’s destined to fall in love with her best friend’s boyfriend. Dannie’s instinct is to resist, to double down on her existing life, and to keep emotional distance from Aaron. Still, she can’t deny that something unexplainable is at work.

The story takes an intense turn when Bella is diagnosed with a serious illness. Suddenly, the questions about romantic destiny are overshadowed by something much bigger: time, mortality, and how to show up for the person you love most in the world when the future you imagined together begins to dissolve. Bella’s diagnosis forces Dannie to confront the limits of her control. She can’t schedule her way out of this. She can’t negotiate with fate. All she can do is be present—taking care of Bella, supporting her through treatment, and clinging to the moments they still have. The tone of the book deepens here, becoming less about a clever “what if” premise and more about grief, devotion, and the kind of love that doesn’t fit into neat boxes.

Aaron becomes intertwined in this struggle because he, too, loves Bella. His relationship with Bella is real and tender, and Dannie witnesses that up close. The connection between Aaron and Dannie is complicated—they share a strange pre existing intimacy from the vision, but in the present, their bond grows through shared care for Bella, shared pain, and late night conversations. There is attraction and emotional closeness, but there is also guilt, confusion, and a fierce sense of loyalty. Dannie doesn’t want to be the person who betrays her best friend. Aaron doesn’t want to hurt Bella either. Their dynamic is not a simple romantic triangle; it’s wrapped in questions of what fate really showed Dannie and why.

As Bella’s illness progresses, the book explores how each character copes. Bella remains, in her own way, vibrant and stubborn. She loves hard, even as her body weakens, and she remains a kind of emotional sun in Dannie’s life. Dannie becomes the planner turned caretaker, learning that sometimes love means sitting with someone in their darkest moments, not fixing anything but refusing to leave. The future Dannie once pictured—marriage, career milestone, a neat five year trajectory—begins to feel small compared to the raw reality in front of her. She realizes that her life cannot be reduced to a timeline or a checklist; it’s being rewritten by forces she never accounted for.

The vision of five years in the future is reinterpreted as the story goes on. At first, it looks like a simple prophecy of romantic fate: she will end up with Aaron. But as events unfold, it becomes clear that what she saw was not a straightforward romantic ending, but a moment loaded with context she didn’t yet understand. The point of that hour in the future isn’t just about who she’s with; it’s about who she has become, what she has lived through, and what she has learned about love. The book asks whether fate is about specific details—rings, apartments, names—or about deeper truths that shape us in ways we can’t anticipate.

By the end of In Five Years, Dannie has changed. She has faced devastating loss, messy feelings, and the collapse of her carefully designed plans. Yet in the rubble, she discovers a more complex, more honest understanding of love. Romantic love is part of it, but not the whole. The love between her and Bella, the way it defined her life and forced her to grow, becomes the heart of the story. The future Dannie saw that night turns out to matter, but not in the neat way she first feared or hoped. Instead, it’s revealed as a glimpse of a self who has survived, who has loved deeply, and who has learned that some of the most important relationships aren’t always the ones we romanticize.

The novel leaves readers with the sense that we can’t always control who we lose, who we meet, or what strange turns our lives take. What we can control is how fully we show up for the people we love, even when the picture of our future changes beyond recognition. In Five Years is ultimately a story about accepting that the most meaningful love stories might not look like the ones we plan—and that sometimes, the love that shapes us most is not the one we end up living with, but the one we carry with us forever.