In Five Years
Dannie Kohan believes in plans. A driven Manhattan lawyer, she has mapped out her life to the letter: the right job, the right apartment, the right man. On the night she nails a career-making interview and gets engaged, everything seems to be falling into place.
Then she falls asleep and wakes up five years in the future — for one vivid, disorienting hour. The apartment is different. The ring is different. The man beside her is a stranger. Just as suddenly, she's back in the present, and she does her best to forget it ever happened.
Four and a half years later, a chance introduction brings that stranger into her life for real, and Dannie is forced to reckon with a future she never chose. Rebecca Serle's In Five Years is a tender, surprising novel — not the love story you expect, but a moving meditation on friendship, grief, and the difference between the life we plan and the life we're given.
A meticulous corporate lawyer whose carefully planned life is upended by a vision of the future.
The man Dannie glimpses in her five-years-ahead vision, who later enters her life for real.
Dannie's fiancé, an investment banker, whose proposal opens the novel.
Dannie's free-spirited lifelong best friend.
Yes. New Line Cinema and Working Title acquired the film rights in 2022, with Aimee Lagos writing the screenplay and Thomas Bezucha directing. As of early 2026 the project is in production, with filming set to take place in New York City; casting and a release date have not been announced.
This book is a standalone story, complete within itself, and does not require reading any other books by Rebecca Serle to understand or appreciate it.
While Rebecca Serle's other works often feature magical realism and explore themes of love and loss, "In Five Years" stands out for its focus on platonic love and the profound impact of friendship, offering a different emotional core than her previous novels.