Thank you Flatiron Books for a digital copy of The Dinner List for review.
It’s Sabrina’s 30th birthday and she is going out to dinner. This one is a little different though, she is going with a group she put on a list years ago, top 5 people dead or alive she would want to have dinner with. Her list includes her estranged father who passed away before they could meet, her university Philosophy professor, her best friend, her ex-boyfriend, and Aubrey Hepburn.
An interesting concept, but for me it just didn’t work. I did not like the main character. That is a bigger problem in “bottle episode” type books. You really have to connect with the characters to stay with them through a dinner party in one place and their reminiscing of the past. Sabrina just wasn’t connecting with me and it was hard for me to finish. However, if you love character development, and she or her ex-boyfriend Tobias really connect for you, you are going to LOVE this one. I thought it was well written, just didn’t work for me particularly.

A Chance to Understand the Past

Sabrina isn’t into psychological games the way her college roommate, Jessica, is, but at Jessica’s urging she ,makes a dinner list of the five people living or dead she’d most like to have dinner with. Now it’s her thirtieth birthday, and the list has become a reality. Sabrina and Jessica are joined at her birthday dinner by five people who are important to her: her father, Robert, who she hasn’t seen since she was a toddler; her college Philosophy professor, who was something of a father figure; her ex-boyfriend, Tobias; and Audrey Hepburn.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why Audrey Hepburn was there, but when it becomes clear that Sabrina was named after a character in one of her movies, her presence becomes clear. Each of the other characters has had a significant impact on Sabrina’s life and this is a chance to understand their motivations.

This story is based on the premise that having conversations with important people from the past in a group setting can help you understand your life. The book started slowly. There is plenty of dinner chitchat and introducing the characters, but as each character begins to tell his or her story, the book becomes more interesting.

For me, it was the romance that held the book together. In some ways, it’s quite magical, but since neither Sabrina nor Tobias is a perfect person, the tensions lead inevitably to problems. The book can make you think about your own life. You may find yourself wondering which five people you’d invite to dinner.

I received this book from Net Galley for this review.

This book was a quick and light read, despite some not so happy content. I enjoyed reading it and I liked the main character, Sabrina. It made me think about my own “dinner list” and what I might learn.

Most of us have composed a “Dinner List” at some point in our lives. If you could pick five people dead or alive, to join you for dinner, who would you choose? Sabrina is meeting her best friend Jessica for dinner to celebrate her 30th birthday. At the restaurant, there are four additional guests: Sabrina’s ex-fiancée, the father she never knew, her former college professor, and Audrey Hepburn, all part of her “Dinner List.” I loved the premise of this book which unfolds hour by hour through dinner conversation, alternating with flashbacks to fill in the story. Some of the coincidences in the story were a bit of a reach, but since I happily bought into the magical realism of the whole dinner, I bought into the coincidences as well. I especially loved the Audrey Hepburn elements and found myself drawing comparisons to the similar themes of Breakfast at Tiffany’s including freedom v. stability, past memories, and broken, messy love. The Dinner List is a beautifully written, thought provoking book-a great book club pick. Thank you #NetGalley for the arc, all opinions are my own.

THE DINNER LIST BY REBECCA SERLE BOOK REVIEW
Listen in on the most important dinner party of Sabrina’s life. One of the guests is none other than Audrey Hepburn. SQUEAL! Get ready for in-depth conversation, a meaningful look at the past & so many feelings!

JUDGING A BOOK BY THE COVER
One of these days I may stop judging a book by its cover. The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle boasts a bright yellow cover that evokes a fancy dinner party in NYC. I’m thinking I’m in for a delightful jaunt down memory lane. This will be fun, light & enjoyable. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, right?

TEARS & TIME
First, let me say The Dinner List gives me SO many feels. Don’t let the bright yellow cover fool you, this book has so much depth! I love when a book surprises me & this one is no exception. There are tears y’all. Serious tears at the end. Rebecca taps into the notion of time. How much time do we spend in relationships & how much time we each have left. Out of nowhere, she seems to bring the dinner party to an apex where I am left breathless.

Except, it’s not out of nowhere. Rebecca Serle knows exactly what she’s doing. Her writing style immediately has readers relate our own experiences to Sabrina. We are left asking what we would do with more time with our loved ones. Who will be on our Dinner List? If we are lucky enough to have one final dinner, what questions would we ask & what those discussions will look like? Just typing this out now gives me tears in my eyes. Like I said, all the feels!


THE VERDICT
I am Really Into This book! The Dinner List is a hell of a book club selection. It’s also a book you will immediately pass along to your friends so you can chat about it. Best is that it’s a quick read that evokes emotions & is a story I think all readers may be able to connect with.

Another book I loved recently is Rush by Lisa Patton. It gave me all the feels.

Special thanks to Rebecca Serle, Flatiron Books & NetGalley for providing our copy in exchange for an honest & fair review.

The Dinner List answers the classic question, if you could dine with 5 people, living or dead, who would you choose? Sabrina chooses her best friend, Jessica, her late father, Robert (who left her and her mother when she was 5 years old), her favorite college professor, Conrad, her ex-fiancee, Tobias, and ... ummmm ... the late Audrey Hepburn.

As the story alternates between the dinner and Sabrina's relationship with Tobias, the reader finds out more about Sabrina's often tumultuous relationships with all of these characters. Even though some of the characters at the dinner are alive and some are dead, I never questioned the plausibility because the story itself was riveting. What if you could solve your life's biggest questions and regrets in one very long, very honest dinner conversation between the five most pivotal people in your life? Read about Sabrina's life changing dinner party in this sweet, quick, and engaging read!

I received an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

Location: Los Angeles, California and New York City

It’s a familar party game. Put your five favorite people, living or dead, on your Dinner List. This book speculates on what would happen if the dinner actually occurred.

Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner at a trendy restaurant. Seated at the table are the five guests she named. Audrey Hepburn, her college philosophy Professor Conrad, her ex-boyfriend Tobias, her estranged father Robert, and her college best friend Jessica are all relaxed and not surprised to be at dinner together. Sabrina is worried that she is either insane or dreaming.

During dinner, flashbacks show the history Sabrina has with these people and why they were added to her dinner list. However, the focus is Sabrina and Tobias’ relationship and why it ended.

I love the magical realism genre (I’m looking at you Haruki Murakami). This book has a magical atmosphere in a more realistic setting. It was innovative of the author to use an old party game as a plot driver. The conclusion is heartfelt and felt organic to the characters. Be aware that the Dinner List is sad in parts. Several of the dinner guests are dead so any revelations will be ultimately bittersweet with the knowledge unusable after the dinner ends. The Dinner List is highly recommended for fans of Me Before You and the Fault in our Stars. 5 stars!

Thanks to Flatiron Books and NetGalley for an advance copy.

Sabrina and her college roomate Jessica long ago made a list: what five people would you most want to have dinner with? Sabrina chooses her boyfriend Tobias, her favorite college professor Conrad, her estranged father, Robert, who abandoned her and her mother as a child, her bff who has kind of disappeared since getting married and having her first child, and Audrey Hepburn.
Sabrina never suspected she would really get an opportunity to have that dinner, but the impossible has happened, and they are all there to help Sabrina. After the wonder wears off of being in Audrey Hepburn’s presence, she slowly unravels the last few years of college and starting her career, as well as her on and off relationship with her boyfriend, her best friend moving away from NYC to Connecticut, and why her alcoholic father could recover for love of another family, but not hers. They have only one night together to figure out why they're all there at dinner and solve whatever lies unresolved in Sabrina's mind.
Told in past and present with just enough answers at a time to keep you guessing and wanting to read more, The Dinner List is a fascinating answer to many questions about the past and present, and how to overcome tragedies that feel like the end of the world.

It’s a question often asked as an icebreaker, or perhaps on one of those online personality quizzes - “If you could invite any five people to dinner, dead or alive, who would you choose?” Some of us pick celebrities, others invite family and friends; Sabrina, protagonist of Rebecca Serle’s The Dinner List, selects none other than Audrey Hepburn, her college professor, the father she never knew, her best friend, and her ex.

What makes Sabrina’s choices more crucial than the rest of ours (we are, after all, just playing this game for fun), is that Sabrina’s dinner party actually happens. When Sabrina arrives for her thirtieth birthday dinner, these five people are seated at her table, waiting to celebrate. Just why Sabrina chose these five people, and why they are important to her life is the premise behind Serle’s novel.

The Dinner List is a nonlinear story alternating between present day, the dinner, and the past, which explains how Sabrina and her five dinner guests got to this point. As the night goes on, details are slowly revealed about Sabrina’s relationship with her father; why Jessica, her best friend, and Sabrina’s relationship is so tense; and what happened to end things between Sabrina and Tobias, her ex. These topics, among others, are offered up as dinner conversation, and the finer points are hashed out among the guests.

While the premise of The Dinner List is surely entertaining, Sabrina’s selections indicate that this isn’t going to be some happy-go-lucky celebratory meal. Instead, The Dinner List explores the demise of several integral relationships in Sabrina’s life, making for a rather unexpected heavy read. There is little to smile and laugh about here, but if you’re a reader who enjoys people studies and exploring how all of the moments in one’s life make the person, then you’ll likely find The Dinner List to be an intriguing read. On the other hand, if you were expecting this book to be a laugh-out-loud side tickler about what happens when you get a bunch of characters together for an unexpected dinner, you may need to look elsewhere.

Personally, what I enjoyed most about The Dinner List is the parts detailing Sabrina and Tobias’s relationship. We get to see the entire arc of the relationship, from meeting to breaking up. The Dinner List is a refreshing love story in that it isn’t a happy love story. Sabrina and Tobias have a lot of problems that they struggle to work out. This novel serves as a reminder that timing and circumstance sometimes sadly make or break a relationship more than the love, or lack thereof, between two people ever could.

This was a fun book and I loved all of the characters at the dinner table. I loved the parts that were in the restaurant, the conversation flowed like it could be current meal in any family (drama included)The flashbacks were well done and I enjoyed seeing Sabrina change and her progression over time with the relationships. This was the perfect amount of seriousness but with humor as well. I will recommend this fun read!

I was very intrigued by the description and heard about this book everywhere, so I was expecting to love it. I thought it was just okay. A tad slow in parts and a kind of odd concept of having a birthday dinner with those both alive and dead. I did enjoy the love story between two of the main characters and the writing was well done .

Let me just start by saying that I am not a magic realism kind of girl. I don’t know what it is, but I have a hard time getting into those kinds of books. But this book? Wow. I loved it. I started this book about an hour before bed. When bedtime came, I reluctantly put the book away. But I couldn’t fall asleep without knowing what happens next, so I got the book back out and finished the whole thing before finally falling asleep.

On Sabrina’s dinner list are five people. Audrey Hepburn, her father, her best friend, a former professor, and an ex-boyfriend. Audrey Hepburn is on the list because Sabrina is a fan. But the rest of the people? Sabrina has unfinished business with. She feels that her professor has more to teach her. Her father abandoned her when she was a child. She feels abandoned by her best friend. And Sabrina and her ex-boyfriend ended their relationship badly. The book alternates between the dinner that is presently happening, and flashbacks that span the ten year relationship of Sabrina and Tobias, the ex at the dinner.

I was engrossed in this story from the first page. I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for Sabrina, who had been abandoned not only by her father when she was a child, but by others later on in life. I wanted Sabrina and Tobias to be able to work things out. I felt connected to these characters, and I didn’t want to put the book down. To me, those are two of the most important qualities in a book. This book is a must read!

Who are five people, living or dead, that you would want to have dinner with? It's a question I'd bet most people have asked or been asked, not actually thinking it would happen, but just to get conversation started whether at a party or just out for drinks or sitting at home.

Well, when Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she is greeted with her list: her friend Jesssica, her former college Professor, her estranged father Robert, her ex-boyfriend Tobias, and Audrey Hepburn.

What unfolds is a very thought-provoking, yet easily accessible story about the relationships we have (friendships, familial, and romantic) and the ups and downs that occur as we, as individuals, grow and experience life and sometimes how things that happen in our lives prevent us from moving forward, or makes us scared of history repeating itself.

Right away, especially with the inclusion of Audrey Hepburn, you wonder what exactly is going on. That need to figure it out propels the story forward. When you realize there's the whole fairytale-esque "ending at midnight" stipulation, the pacing is catapulted forward even quicker as Sabrina tries to, basically, figure out her life. Why things between her and Jessica have been strained, why could she never reconcile with her father, what his leaving did to her and how it effects her to this day, and most especially where her relationship with Tobias went wrong and can she fix it?

It's a cleverly built story and Rebecca Serle throws in a somewhat unexpected twist near the half-way mark that even further ratchets up the mystery of how Sabrina can be having a dinner with these particular people and what it all means for Sabrina's self-discovery.

I won't say too much more because it's definitely a book that's best read with some surprises, but I thought it was at times magical yet real, heartbreaking yet hopeful.

For Sabrina's 30th birthday, she finds herself having dinner with five significant people: her best friend, three very important people from her past and Audrey Hepburn. I love this premise and found the dinner scenes themselves very charming for the most part. Besides her best friend and Audrey, Sabrina found herself sitting down with her deceased father, her college professor and her one true love, Tobias. Needless to say, Sabrina has baggage along with past issues to reconcile with everyone at the table except Audrey who, honestly, seemed a little blasé most of the story. I was engaged with these dinner scenes, particularly the conversations between Sabrina and Tobias and Sabrina and her best friend...much tension could be felt.

However, and this is a big however for me, the dinner scenes were interspersed with something I often have issues with...flashbacks. Just when it felt like we were at a crucial part of the dinner discussion or when tension between people was high, we were taken back in time to retrace the love affair of Sabrina and Tobias. I will admit...this led to skimming on my part because I wanted to return to the dinner scenes. There was an underlying hint that there was more to the dinner interactions than meets the eye. Was I surprised by what that turned out to be? Unfortunately no, it ended up being as I predicted which really bummed me out because I love to be surprised. Overall, this was a light, easy read.

A delightful premise that will have you naming your own 5 dinner guests. This is Sabrina’s dinner party on her birthday. She has invited her estranged father Robert, her significant other of 9 years, Tobias, her BFF, Jessica, Her college professor and Audrey Hepburn. They are all there for a reason. To help Sabrina put to rest the past and move on with her life.
This book is a compelling read and I could not put it down until I had finished the last page. It is a book about family, romance, and friends. It is also about expectations and dashed hopes. It only gets a 4-star rating because I really can't figure out why Audrey Hepburn is in the book in spite of Sabrina and her fathers' enjoyment of her films. I recommend this book but have a box of tissues handy.

My Five: My Great Grandfathers, August and Frederick (German immigrants in the 19th century), Lisa Kleypas (favorite author), my Mom (because I miss her), Steve Martin (Every dinner party needs someone to tell a joke). I expect this list will change the more I think about it.

I'd like Audrey Hepburn to come to my house for dinner too! Sabrina (get it) is living out her must do when she has her dad, her ex, her best friend, a college professor AND Audrey Hepburn for her 30th birthday dinner. Given that not all of these people are, ahem, alive, is what makes this more interesting. Sabrina's tale of love, regret, and wishes is told through these relationships, some of which are more reflective than others. That she's only 30 (I know, it seems old to many) makes me wonder how she would interact with these people if she were 40 or 50. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's a good read with a solid heart to it.

This is such an interesting concept - I think we've all flippantly decided to scribble down who our people we'd ask to dinner would be, but similarly to this book we've never considered how well they would get along with each other. Oops. Dramatic new adult tinged with pockets of levity thanks to Audrey Hepburn's fun appearance, this makes for a thought provoking read for anyone who's ever made their own dinner list.

Incredibly sad, an yet I didn't cry. My sympathy for the characters was underdeveloped because I found them to be unbelievably immature. Also, I could have done without all the bs about the afterlife. Still a heartwarming read, and definitely one to make you think. I am sure book clubs will be devouring this one.

I had heard people talk about this book on instagram and decided to try it. I really enjoywd this book. I loved the interactions with the characters. I really felt like i was there in the story. It had many sad parts but i loved that sabrina was able to have closure with all of the people she invited to her dinner.

I heard about this novel last month. It sounded great, because who hasn't made a "five people I'd invite for dinner" list before? The only thing that made me hesitate at first was the "magical realism" in the description.

It took me quite a while to get into this novel, and with school starting, my reading time was limited to evenings. However, I pushed through to finish it this weekend because it really captured me about halfway through.

Magical realism aside, I think more of what is needed is "willful suspension of disbelief." Maybe it really is more “magical realism” as the description states, because how else can you have the narrator's deceased father and Audrey Hepburn there? There is a revelation about halfway through that was a turning point for me: Do I press on and continue, or do I quit? That is how much it upset me. However, I persisted, pushed through, and finished. I'm glad I did.

The author's alternating chapter style really works. And after the first several chapters, the continual dialogue around the dinner table doesn't feel as forced or as dialogue-y as before. She does an amazing job of delving deep into these characters' motivations and desires.

I liked how the book made me think of romantic relationships, what is socially expected, what others expect of us, and what we expect of the other person in the relationship. Very interesting and I'll be pondering it for a while.
_____
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for an ebook review copy.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book on NetGalley for review. All opinions are my own.