Amaris (amarisafloria)'s Reviews > In Five Years

Rating: 3.5 stars

Two things I wish I was aware of before reading:

1) In terms of genre, In Five Years leans more toward women's fiction than romance.
2) It's not a time-travel novel. Dannie doesn't spend any more time in the "future" outside of that one night.

By describing this book as "women's fiction," I just mean it's a fictional story, written by a woman, about women and issues that women go through. I'm not saying that men cannot read this book—it's just a very general term I'm using to contrast the romance genre, which is more focused on how a romantic relationship develops. In women's fiction, there is generally a bigger focus on other things outside of romance (but that's not to say there is no romance in women's fiction.) ANYWAY, this is not a discussion on women's fiction vs. romance lol.

I guess you can see the difficulties in distinguishing between the two genres, which is something that affected my enjoyment of this book. Even after listening to the first 10%, I was thinking, "ooh, it's going to be a love story where Dannie will have to decide if she's really happy staying with her fiancé because of the dream she had!" And it is, to a certain extent, but it's not the focus.

I've been really conflicted because how I feel and how I should feel doesn't match up. It's an emotional story, which means everything in my heart is supposed to be wrung out. But I kinda felt ... cheated? Like I wasn't introduced properly to what the story would be, even after getting past the first third. It's like I made a plan to visit the beach and I ended up at a ski resort. Both are places I love, but I didn't prepare to go snowboarding! I think it just seems like In Five Years was two different stories combined together to make one, and it negatively affected my experience and appreciation. I liked how everything came together, but I would've loved this book so much more if it built up the theme of friendship from the beginning.

SPOILERS:
(view spoiler)[I really wasn't expecting the book to be so focused on Dannie and Bella's friendship. Even though I like that change of pace, I felt like their relationship wasn't very emphasized and I didn't get the sense that they were that close? Maybe that's just me though. But because of how I viewed their relationship, and the way it didn't seem like a big thing to Dannie, I did not feel emotionally connected to what was going on. Of course, cancer itself is a TERRIBLE thing. But the whole time I was thinking that it was an awful excuse to get Bella out of the picture so Dannie could end up with Aaron 🤡 Of course, that was NOT what ended up happening … so I 100% felt bamboozled. Still, after all that, I still really love how it ended. When her vision collided with the present. "I mistook this. It is not love, it is grief." I just wish the build-up was a little more obvious. (hide spoiler)]