Every time Daphne meets a new man, she finds a piece of paper with his name and a number on it – the exact time that they will be together. Until one night, on the night of a blind date with a guy named Jake, there’s just a name and no number.
I wish I had more to say about this book but I don’t. I thought the premise was super interesting and was on board for some magical realism. What happens when there’s no date on the paper? And then we find out and…it’s kind of boring? Daphne ends up dating Jake and it’s nice and then they decide to get married and that’s about it. There’s no explanation of where the notes come from or why. There’s no reasoning as to why Daphne trusts the notes – at one point, when talking about a former relationship, it seemed like Daphne had no reason to break up with a guy other than the fact that the note said 3 months and it had been 3 months so I guess it was time to break up (insert shrug emoji here).
I also thought the book took a weird tangent in the middle and introduced a completely new plot twist in the middle of the book. It felt unnecessary and pointless to the story.
I remember reading Serle’s other book, In Five Years, and being underwhelmed so I went back and looked at that review. And I had basically the same complaints as in this book – I didn’t love the main character and there were so many unneeded descriptions of clothes and food. There are so many descriptions of what they are eating and wearing! Maybe that is just how this author writes? I found it kind of tiresome.
I was also really annoyed at an editing mistake that I cannot get out of my mind. At one point Daphne is walking her dog and talking about wearing a dress and sneakers because it’s so hot outside. And then she goes home and takes off her t-shirt and yoga pants. How did the editor miss this?
The nice thing about this book is that it is only 250 pages.
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