Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle
This is a romance book with a few twists. The central character is Daphne Bell, the assistant to a well-known producer, who lives in L.A. not far from where she grew up.
Daphne has long believed in a higher power that guided her life. All her life, from elementary school to the present, she has known how long each romantic relationship she experiences will be. Either just before, or soon after meeting someone, she finds a slip of paper that gives the first name of the man, and a time period. Sometimes it is only a few days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. This makes her feel in control in a way. She can enter the relationship knowing when it will end. She has only disclosed this information to one person, and that was by accident. His name is Hugh, and while he once appeared on one of those slips of paper, now he is one of her best friends. She regularly goes to the market with him, meets him for meals, and talks about the latest man in her life.
As the book opens, she is about to go on a blind date that another friend has set her up on, and this time the paper only has his name. What does that mean? She is shaken by this. Will Jake be her life partner, the one she stays with forever?
As her relationship with Jake advances, we are taken back through the other men she's spent time with, and we see how she met each one, and how the relationships developed and ended. We also learn that she has another secret, one that may devastate Jake, and she has to decide whether and how to convey this information.
I really enjoyed the segments that took us back in Daphne's life, showing us her at different stages in life and how she acted in different relationships. This book explores how we act and react in our relationships, and how true to ourselves we are, as well as how we are changed by each experience. Like another book I read recently, The Husbands, the magic realism aspect of this novel gives it more depth and raises interesting questions to reflect on.
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