Looking Five Years into the Future
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*****
Here is the best recommendation I can give for this delightful book – I started it on Saturday evening, read until my eyes could stay open no more (about 200 out of 260 pages), then finished the book as soon as I woke up on Sunday. Pure and simple, I needed to know what was gonna happen next!
In Five Years is the story of Dannie Kohan, a highly organized and regimented young woman who has very strong beliefs about how her world should run. She thinks twenty-four months is how long one should date a man before moving in with him. She thinks twenty-eight is the right age to get engaged. She thinks thirty the right age to get married. We meet her at age twenty-eight, and we know she has been living with David for the requisite amount of time and so we, along with Dannie, expect an engagement in the opening pages of the book.
Additionally, Dannie is a high-powered attorney who is interviewing for her dream job. She is sure she is going to nail the interview and she does! She even does a great job of fielding the proverbial question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Of course, she will be working for that company and she will be up for junior partner! When the interviewer asks what she will be doing outside of work, marriage to David is the answer.
As we move from the interview to dinner out at a fancy restaurant – and a show stopping marriage proposal from David – we watch the giddy couple drink a bit too much bubbly in celebration. This is quite unusual for them. Upon returning home, romantic plans for what comes next are sidelined as Dannie falls asleep.
Is it a dream or time travel or what, but when she awakens, she is in some unfamiliar apartment, the TV is on and a news show tells her that she is five years into the future. Additionally, the man who comes into her bedroom is a very handsome guy who really turns her on, but he is not David.
But then she wakes up still again! And she is back home with David. This happens on page 30, giving the reader and Dannie 230 pages to juxtapose David to Sexy Guy. Readers also get to compare Dannie to her life-long best friend, Bella. Bella has always been footloose and fancy free, quite the opposite of Dannie. Is there a best way to be?
This all makes the book such a fluffy, beach-read-of-a-story except that it really isn’t. There is a back story that makes all of Dannie’s and Bella’s choices crystal clear as the characters and the readers race through days, months, and years to see exactly where Dannie will find herself in five years.
I so enjoyed this book that I immediately looked into other novels by this author. I see one that sounds interesting, One Italian Summer. Evidently, it is the story of a young woman who is very close friends with her mother. In fact, the mother/daughter team are planning a trip together, to Italy, to the place where the mother spent a summer before meeting her husband/her daughter’s father. When the mother dies suddenly, the daughter decides to go on the trip anyway, where she meets the 30-year-old version of her mother. Magical realism to be sure, but what an interesting idea, to imagine our own mother as a young woman prior to marriage…
Bottom line: I like this author!
*****
Click here to learn more about In Five Years on Amazon.
*****
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