Do You Want to Know the End Date of Your New Relationship?
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It’s not unusual for me to read multiple books by an author, but I usually read them over the span of years. This is not the case with Rebecca Serle’s work. Over the last seven weeks, I have read eight books, and she has written three of them. In that she has only four adult fiction books in print, that’s a large share of her work. Her books all involved magical realism and I gobbled them up.
This newest book, Expiration Dates, is the story of a young woman named Daphne. She is single, but searching for love. Magically, whenever she meets a new guy and goes on a date with him, she receives a note that tells her how long her relationship with the new person will last.
Daphne’s first experience with these notes was in the fifth grade when she came home from soccer practice and found a postcard picturing Pasadena on her desk that said, “Seth, eight days.” She knew of a boy named Seth. And he quickly became her first boyfriend. And the relationship lasted eight days.
As the book opens, lots of years and boyfriends have passed, and she is about to go on a first date with Jake. A good friend has fixed them up, so that’s looking positive, as is the fact that the note she receives is blank except for his name. This leads her to believe he is THE ONE.
The book takes the reader on lots of Jake and Daphne dates. We also get lots of old boyfriend stories: Martin – three days, Noah – five weeks, Tae – two years and two months, etc. And then there is HUGO (!) – three months. (The emphasis is mine – even I had chemistry with Hugo.)
Though this is a fluffy summer-reading-type-book, a big question to explore is how these notes impacted her relationships and if the end of a relationship for Daphne was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Might she have stayed with the guy in question longer if she didn’t have a preconceived notion of its end date?
And ultimately, it suggests it is possible to find something wrong with every potential spouse, but then it asks if it is possible to find marital success if we decide to do what it takes to make a given relationship work?
I truly enjoyed this book just like I enjoyed Rebecca Serle’s other books, In Five Years and One Italian Summer. I recommend all of them.
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If you like the big questions explored in Expiration Dates, you will also enjoy The Husbands by Holly Gramazio.
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Click here to learn more about Expiration Dates on Amazon.
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