Book Review | Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle

Mar 19

If you’re thinking about checking out Expiration Dates yourself, don’t worry about spoilers. The first part of my reviews are always spoiler-free so you can see if the book is your cup of tea. After a quick summary and a basic review, I’ll give a spoiler warning and do a deep dive into everything I loved and hated about Expiration Dates.

Info about author

Content Warning

I always like to give a quick content warning for any sensitive topics. These are some content warnings for book:

Ableism.
Eating disorders.
Intimacy.
Mental illness.
Chronic illness.

Quick Synopsis

In Expiration Dates, Daphne, our main character, receives notes that tell her who she’ll date and when the relationship will end. It seems like this system is working out for her, until she gets a note like one she’s never seen before.

The pressure of this new note and relationship combines with Daphne’s already complicated life, making it more difficult for her to navigate her romantic options. this book is all about what it means to make your own choices, and how to know when you’ve met “the one.”

My Rating

Everybody has to come up with their own system for judging and rating books, and here’s mine:

One star: I couldn’t finish the book. (DNF)
Two stars: I struggled to finish, but I did.
Three stars: This book was okay and worth reading.
Four stars: I liked this book and I would recommend it to a friend.
Five stars: I’d read this book again, and it’s going on my favorites shelf.

By no means do I think this is a perfect rating system, but I had to come up with something that would help me avoid arbitrarily assigning ratings. This provides a solid guideline for rating qualifications.

I gave Expiration Dates a four star rating because I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t read it again.

Summary

We’re now entering the spoiler-y part of this review. If you think Expiration Dates sounds like your cup of tea, click away, read it, and come back to see if you agree or disagree with my critique. If you like the sound of the book but you don’t want to read it, don’t worry, I’ll give you the full rundown.

SPOILERS

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SPOILERS -

This book starts out with Daphne’s note—the first one she’s ever received without a date for the end of the relationship. Throughout her life, she’s received notes that detail her next boyfriend and how long he’ll last. Sometimes it’s a single night, and the longest was two years.

This note simply reads “Jake,” and so she goes into her date that night with the knowledge that the universe thinks she and Jake are endgame, and the notes have never been wrong. The date goes reasonably well, and Daphne immediately meets up with her best friend, Hugo, to tell him about this new, blank note.

Daphne met—and dated Hugo—years before. She wasn’t even going to give him her number until he plucked the note out from under her windshield wiper, thinking she got a ticket, and handed it over. It read: Hugo: Three months.

Though their relationship ended along time ago, Daphne and Hugo are still inseparable, going to the farmer’s market together and meeting frequently to talk about Jake and their lives.

Throughout the book, we watch as Daphne and Jake get closer. We also learn about her previous relationships, and how they always seem to prove the notes right. Even when Daphne decides to ignore them and try with the person, they’ll surprise her and end it right at the time the note said the relationship would stop.

Jake shares that he lost his first wife to an aggressive disease, and Daphne isn’t sure how to handle it at first. She likes Jake—he’s honest, straight-forward, and very genuine, and their relationship continues to progress until he asks her to move in with him.

This is right around when we find out that Daphne has a severe heart condition. The first time she collapsed was in college, and it places a lot of limitations on her life. She has to closely monitor her salt intake and be careful with alcohol.

When she tells Jake about this, he’s very supportive of her, and says that it doesn’t matter. He asks her to marry him. Daphne can’t shake the feeling that they aren’t right for each other—Jake wants kids, and she doesn’t, really. She also can’t shake the feeling that Jake doesn’t deserve to go through losing another wife.

Hugo becomes more and more distant as the book goes on, and we get more backstory into his relationship with Daphne. Right around the three month mark of their relationship, she’s rushed to the hospital. When Hugo gets worried after not hearing from her, she tells him her dad is the one who’s sick. He asks to come and see them, and she says not to.

But Hugo does show up at her parents’ house with flowers, asking how her dad is doing, and that’s when he finds out that it was actually Daphne who was in the hospital. Daphne realizes that this is right around the three-month mark, and when she sees Hugo hesitate for a moment, she breaks it off with him, thinking he can’t handle the stress, or that he might just leave her anyway.

Daphne also reveals the secret about the papers to Hugo, who takes the info

Fast forward back to the present and Jake and Daphne are fully moved in together and planning their wedding. Hugo and Daphne go for a walk with Daphne’s dog, and Hugo asks her if she’s really going to get married. They start to argue, and Hugo says that he wants to be with her.

This shocks Daphne, but what shocks her even more is when Hugo admits he’s the one who wrote Jake’s note. He found the real one, which specified that Daphne and Jake would last only a few weeks, and replaced it with a blank note.

Daphne drops Murphy’s leash and her dog goes running off. Hugo is chasing after him and trying to talk to Daphne, and after the dog returns, Hugo admits that he wanted Daphne to know that she didn’t have to have a limit on her relationships, or follow the instructions from the random notes.

After this interaction, Daphne goes to see her dad, who gives her some wisdom about life and relationships. Then she talks to Jake—and tells him that they can’t get married. He’s not happy about it, but Daphne is insistent that it’s not right.

At the end of the story, we see Daphne with a promotion at work, talking to Hugo on the phone and going to meet a date in the cafe. Her date ends up being Hugo, and when she gets to the door, someone says she dropped a piece of paper.

Deep Dive

First of all, I think the concept for this book is very interesting. This element of magical realism sets the structure for the story: allowing us to see Daphne through her past and present relationships. By showing us both the present, with Jake, and the past, with her other boyfriends, we can see how the expiration dates affect her romantic connections, and how she’s come to let the papers lead her decision making.

While I thought the concept was very interesting, I think it’s worth noting that you can figure out the end of the story pretty much right at the beginning—it’s obvious that Daphne and Hugo are still in love with one another, and any ending other than them being together would make this a very awkward romance. But I will say that even though the ending with Hugo was obvious, I still enjoyed the journey getting there.

There were also a few moments in this book that I thought were refreshing by not following what I assumed would happen in any moment. For example, when Hugo and Daphne are walking at the park together, the book mentions that it’s really hot, and Hugo drops the huge bombshell that he wrote Jake’s note, which resulted in Daphne saying yes to a wedding proposal.

What seems obvious in this scene, and what I expected, was for Daphne to collapse for the drama. But I appreciated that the book did something different with this, allowing her condition to exist without being a plot-driving device.

Speaking of Daphne’s condition, I also like how this book offers a unique perspective. I thought it was an interesting decision to leave this information out until the middle of the book. Maybe it’s an intentional choice so the reader can see what it’s like to know Daphne, and not to learn about her condition until after knowing everything else about her.

One critique I had for this story was just wanting more of Daphne and Hugo. I enjoyed the scene at the park, when Hugo admitted his feelings, but I think it may have been a bit more impactful if we had seen them interacting more and gotten a little more spark from their relationship.

As Daphne and Jake get closer, Hugo is more absent, and I think the idea behind this is that it was too painful for him to watch Daphne falling in love with someone else, but I’m not sure it was the best choice for making the reader invested in that relationship.

All in all, I liked Expiration Dates and would recommend it if you’re looking for a romance book that really focuses on our decisions in relationships. As always, you can follow me on Goodreads or Instagram to learn more about what I’m reading now and what I’m reading next.

Deion Malloy