In Five Years

Where do you see yourself in five years? was the question I asked myself when I first picked up this book. It's a question we subconsciously ask ourselves during the course of our lives, which is why I felt deeply connected to unravelling the plot of this book when I began reading it.

As a matter of fact, many of us have our lives all planned out, even to the next five years but what happens, when like Dannie you have a dream and you see a completely different version of what you have planned out?

Spoilers Ahead

Well, that's what happens to Dannie, who believes in living life by numbers. She lives what many would call a well pre-calculated life. She plans her future and her days and already predicts what her life would look like in the next five years. Getting married to Dave her fiancé, who fits exactly into the perfect plan and clinching the position of senior associate in a firm she has just been recently accepted into, Dannie definitely has everything figured out, until she doesn't.

It takes a split second, for everything in one’s life to change, and that moment for Dannie comes in form of a dream on the night of her engagement to David, a dream that might actually become reality, and may or may not cost her the people she actually loves. One of those people being Bella. Bella is Dannie's free spirited, live in the moment, rich childhood best friend. Though polar opposites, the both of them have been close knitted since childhood, and while Dannie is one who already knows what her order at a restaurant would look like, Bella is definitely the spontaneous one who would order a coffee as far as it tastes good.

Bella is my favorite character in the novel, but if you want a character who sees things in black and white, then Dannie is the one you're looking for. While I am not against being painstakingly organized and being an analytical planner, I also believe we should let go a little and just let fate do its thing.

Which is why, when fate finally plays its role, and Dannie has a dream of what her love life would look like in the next five years, I feel a little scared for her.

Not only is this stranger she sees in her dream a stark opposite to her current fiancé, who she plans on spending her life with, but she is also about to experience feelings that are foreign to her concept of number. I mean who counts when they are being hugged by their boyfriends? Certainly Dannie.

How much control do we really have over our lives? Barely four and a half years later when Dannie sees her prince charming stranger in a dream, Bella, her best friend walks into a restaurant where they are to have a double date, hand in hand with the man of her dreams. Which leads me to another question, do dreams come true?

Bella's boyfriend, Aaron is the man she saw in her dream years ago, and even if Dannie hates to admit, she has been waiting for him since she first saw him in her dream. It doesn't help that for the first time, Bella might actually be serious with Aaron.

Which is why, I do not like the plot twist in this novel. For Dannie's dream to come to actualization, a lot of people especially her best friend would have to get terribly hurt and if the actualization of our dreams come at the expense of other people's happiness, then are those dreams really worth it?

But the author has a totally different plot in mind for the readers, and while we expect Dannie to betray her best friend and go after her dream man, she actually does everything in her power to stop the dream from coming through. She even goes as far as wanting to marry David, who I did not really like as a character, because I perceived him unable to make decisions of his own.

The plan to marry David fails before it even starts, and Dannie is afraid her dreams might actually come through. Fate, however has other things in store for her, and it turns out she might actually lose Bella her friend to ovarian cancer. Dannie, becomes the one who grieves for her friend.

Bella faces a very tragic fate in the novel, and as someone who loved her character, it's suitable to say, she doesn't deserve it.
Dannie however realizes, that her dream comes through, but it is in direct contrast to what she actually thinks will happen.
The plot twist at the ending totally threw me off balance and even though the characters each developed in the novel like they were supposed to, I felt Bella deserved a better fate than what she got.

The novel was certainly good though there was a hint of tragedy at the end. It opened my eyes to the realization that while it is good to be an analytical planner, it could also be good to just live a little because nobody knows what fate might have in store for us.

This book made me go through so many emotions at once, from pain to heartbreak to gratitude, it also triggered the realization that things may not exactly pan out as we plan them. It will always be a battle of fate over will.

Dannie and Bella's friendship helped with a better appreciation of what true friendship is, staying and enduring in the face of hardship.
The ending of this novel didn't really bode well with me, I would have loved Bella to have a happier ending, and for Dannie to experience what it was like to live as spontaneously as her best friend did.

This is not your typical romance novel, but if you want something out of the box, then I recommend "In Five Years".

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