Stephanie Sullivan: Review - Expiration Dates

TITLE: Expiration Dates

RATING: ★★★★

RELEASE DATE: March 5th, 2024

Summary (from Goodreads): Being single is like playing the lottery. There’s always the chance that with one piece of paper you could win it all.

From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes the romance that will define a generation.

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.

Told with her signature warmth and insight into matters of the heart, Rebecca Serle has finally set her sights on romantic love. The result is a gripping, emotional, passionate, and (yes) heartbreaking novel about what it means to be single, what it means to find love, and ultimately how we define each of them for ourselves. Expiration Dates is the one fans have been waiting for.

REVIEW: This was my first time reading Rebecca Serle’s work, and I truly loved it. The plot was intriguing and very different from anything I’ve read before, which kept me turning the pages and completing the book in only a couple of days. Daphne is a remarkable heroine with a medical condition, who overcomes many odds, and her circumstances reminded me so much of my oldest son, who is a Type 1 diabetic. (I caught myself ugly crying during parts of this story that hit really close to home.) Even though I predicted the ending halfway through the book, I was so happy it turned out the way I hoped it would. I would highly recommend Expiration Dates to everyone, and I can’t wait to read more of Rebecca’s work in the near future.

(DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this title from NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.)