I love how she mixes women's fiction with magical realism. I thought this one would be a light, fluffy romance but boy was I wrong...this book was so much more than that. It is such an intriguing concept, little notes tell our main character, Daphne, how long her relationships will last. The author throws in a couple of surprise twists that I did not see coming and I thoroughly enjoyed being surprised that way. The best part, for me, was when Daphne stopped letting the pieces of paper dictate her life and she took control of her choices herself and remembers you only have one life so live it to your best ability to be happy no matter how long or short it is. The book is short and very emotive and was such a gut punch a couple of times. I was really happy when Daphne found herself and her one true love.

SO this is the first book written by Rebecca Serle that I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story takes place in sunny California.The main character is Daphne and every time she is about to start a new relationship, since middle school, a paper mysteriously appears with the name of her new guy and how long they will be together. One day, there's just a name but NO expiration date. Is this guy the "one"? Rebecca Serle's characters are likable, relatable and I enjoyed the story!
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy!

This one ripped my heart out and then handed me a flower and kissed me on the cheek. How dare you, Rebecca?! How dare you make me absolutely fall in love with this wildly flawed woman and the man who loves her beyond anything. How dare you suck me into this absolutely brilliant allegory of self-imposed limitations of the heart and our inability to see what is staring right at us? My heart is absolutely broken and I need more of them to be fully healed.

I'll start by saying I stayed up until 4am last night to finish this book. It was addicting. I needed to know what happened. In the end I just wish I'd gotten a bit more than we had. I feel like it finished at about 75% of the way in.
The premise of finding a note telling you the exact date of each relationship you're going to have is so intriguing. I wish there was a bit of history there. No speculation or history as to whether it's from a grandma who has passed or a deity, etc.
About halfway through the book, something is revealed. It gave the book a new direction and I wanted to see where that took things.
Rebecca Serle can clearly write. The book was well written and had me racing through the pages to find out more.
Severe spoiler alerts below.
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Spoiler <With the heart condition, I started to wonder, could the paper be blank because Jake will die? Will he be who gives her his heart? Is that why they met? Why he has such a large heart? Unfortunately the answer was not as exciting.
I feel like it ended without showing us if Hugo could actually even work. He hadn't had to handle a real crisis. He was still on his phone all the time. His personality could turn pretty shitty. We never heard from her parents about Hugo.
I was just left feeling like my copy was missing chapters vs missing the characters from a book.>

I’ve loved all of the Rebecca Serle books I’ve read, and this one is part of that list. I love how there is whimsy and a bit of magic in her books, and it makes me believe there is magic around us. I thought this book was charming. Thank you for the ARC!!

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Dating is hard enough, but what if every time you are about to meet someone new you received a piece of paper with how long you will be dating that person. That’s how it is for Daphne. She wants love, but trying to find lasting love has been hard, especially when she knows it’s expiration date.

Did I like it? Yes. Did I love it? No. Would I recommend it? Yes, I think so for the right person.

Themes: ❤️💔💌👩‍❤️‍👨

My thoughts: 🙂😊

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3.5 rounded up.

I love the worlds and relationships Rebecca Serle crafts, and Expiration Dates is no exception. The scene with her father was touching.

The unique premise immediately hooked me and kept me curious throughout, but ultimately I don’t feel like I got enough of this one! It stopped on the brink of something great and enamoring.

I wish there’d been 2-3 less stories of past loves, and more to the ending/Hugo… Hugo drops the bomb and then the ending wrapped up so quickly! Similar to their breakup as well.

Once the main conflict was introduced/presented, she intrinsically followed the motions and ended up happy-go-lucky. I would’ve loved more tension here.

I had high hopes for this book based on the description, and while it was good, it wasn't what I expected. The book. was dry, and it took me a long time to actually get through the book.

While the main character clearly had gone through some very serious things in her life, I just couldn't get on board with her lackadaisical way about going through her life. Her choices, her journey, i just couldn't connect with it. Sadly, it wasn't just her that I had trouble with, it was all of the men she had dated too, including her best friend.

This was the second book that I’ve read by this author and I thought it was a cute story. I feel like it took a little bit to get into the flow of the book, but as it progressed the storyline fit together better. I feel like overall this is a little bit of surface level compared to what it could be, and I actually wouldn’t mind it going a little bit more in-depth in regards to the FMC contemplating the whole idea about these timeframes/deadlines.

Definitely not my favorite of Rebecca Serle's novels. Expiration Dates isn't without its charm, but like her previous book, One Italian, the plot hinges on a far-fetched "magical" element that is never questioned and just doesn't make sense. In this case, the heroine has received mysterious written messages from the Universe ? (going back to her preteen years), that tells her how long a relationship is going to last. She keeps this secret from everyone for years and years (really?). It is reminiscent of The Measure, where everyone gets the string...but at least in that story people actually question and wonder about how strange this phenomenon is.
One other nitpicky thing...why must she describe everything her characters are wearing, all the time? Are their clothes supposed to make up for lack of character development?
I'm sure I'll be in the minority of readers with this opinion, but I believe the author has better stories to write.

I absolutely adored this book! Normally when I find a book I love I read it in one sitting but in this case I kept stopping myself because I really didn't want the book to end. This is especially saying a lot given romance is not normally my favorite genre. The biggest twist isn't the twisty-ist, but that did not take away from my enjoyment at all. I loved Daphne and was routing for her and for her happy ending. My fingers are crossed that this gets picked up as movie or TV adaption because I think it would be great for that.

Daphne Bell has been relying on small pieces of paper with names of potential mates, as well a relationship timeline to predict her love life. But this time she receives a paper without a timeline. Does this mean she's found her one true love? As her new love story unfolds, Daphne must grapple with her feelings and whether she should tell her new beau about all her secrets.

If you're a Rebecca Serle fan, this book was definitely worth the wait. The story telling was charming, engaging, suspenseful and on more than one occasion I was surprised (and pleased!) by the twists and turns taking place in the novel. You'll want to place this on your TBR list - it's that good! Many thanks to Atria Books eGalley via Netgalley for the opportunity to pre-read this book before publication.

I can’t began to explain how much I love this book. The character growth was amazing and I will forever be in love with the story!

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the advanced copy of this book. I am giving feedback with no compensation.

Love Love Love!
This is the first time I have read anything by Rebecca but I will now be reading all her other books.
Wonderful story. I fell in love with the ,characters and became fully invested in their stories.

Daphne knows how long her relationships will last and many times before it even begins until one day she receives a note with just a name…Jake. This story was like two stories wrapped into one. I thought I had it figured out until half way through when I realized it was an even deeper story. I could not put this book down and honestly it’s my favorite Rebecca Serle book. This would be a great book club pick.

I love the way Rebecca searle writes, but the execution always falls a little sideways for my liking and leaves to many loose ends.
I’m a fan of the concept behind the story; get a piece of paper that seemingly determines the fate of your relationships. However, once she gets the paper it ends up being somewhat of and end all be all for her.
None of the characters seem to have chemistry and the last scripted relationship was down right boring and didn’t seem like a good fit to begin with.
There also seemed to be an underlying mental Illness that the main character never really dealt with which made for a quick wrap up of the book.

3.75 stars

Imagine being able to know how long your latest relationship would last. For Daphne, every person she has been involved with has always come with a slip of paper that tells her exactly how long their romantic entanglement will last. Whether it’s one day, one month, or one year, she always know the expiration date of the relationship she is involved in. In some ways this allows her to prepare for the end before it even comes around, though whether this is a good thing or not remains up for debate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Daphne isn’t the most adept at letting people into her life. She tends to keep walls up, whether it’s with her latest boyfriend, or her best friend, she always holds a piece of herself back. Whether this is because of the slips of paper and her knowledge of how long each relationship she is in will be, or whether it’s just who she is is difficult to tell.

But what happens when you finally meet the guy who doesn’t come with an expiration date? Daphne has been waiting for this moment her while dating life, and yet when it happens finally, she doesn’t quite know what to think. Jake isn’t at all what she would have expected herself to end up with, he’s not as tall as she might have wanted, he’s kind and understanding, he’s an average kind of guy, and he’s older than her. And yet, the more she gets to know him the more these qualities become exactly the ones that make him stable and irresistible.

The idea of Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle very much appealed to me in its uniqueness and just the thought of what it would be like dating and knowing when each relationship would end. It might seem like a blessing but all I could think of were all the ways this could be negative. It was a very interesting concept and it definitely reeled me into this book in a way that I just had to see where it was going. Now, after actually getting into the book, I did grow a little uncertain at the distinct lack of conflict involved in a relationship you know from the start is supposed to be end game. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that any issues between them were basically resolved before they even began because it was refreshing having a relationship that wasn’t back and forth when the issue could have easily been solved through communication, or whether to feel like it was too easy, untested, and perhaps a bit boring in lacking the tempestuous, passionate romances that books often have. I’m still honestly torn because it’s both a relief and a bit bland when absolutely nothing seems to be a stumbling block between them.

In the latter half there is a reveal that picked the stakes up a little bit and very much explained a lot about Daphne, who she is and why she’s the way she is. It also added more emotional stakes to the plot I found, and was an eye opener in the sense that it gave new meaning to some of the tidbits dropped here and there throughout the first half of the story. It allowed me to look back at things with new eyes and see things differently. It also proved how unreliable of a narrator Daphne is up until this point which I kind of loved because she purposely hid parts of her story.

I also very much enjoyed the little flashes of some of her past relationships that we got from chapter to chapter, with flashbacks of sorts to her previous dating history, of some of the relationships that were more defining to who Daphne is and how certain people deeply effected her, whether the relationship was a few days or years. They all had meaning and in fact, seemed like the perfect experiences for her at certain times of her life. Watching these stories play out really helped give background to Daphne and make her relatable and interesting to follow.

I did very much enjoy this book, I thought it was a cute little read, although I’m a bit ambivalent about the ending as I’m not completely sure how I felt about it. It wasn’t a bad ending by any means, it just felt both sufficiently concluded, but also certain parts of it - which I won’t comment on specifically to avoid spoilers - didn’t quite match my expectations and almost felt like a cop out. Regardless it was a fun, interesting read and I did fly through it!

Rebecca Searle knows the way to my tear ducts. I really enjoy how all of her books are crafted in different ways but her writing always packs an emotional punch. Daphne was a likeable character who mysteriously received notes that tell her the length of her relationships. It was a cute concept and I was enjoying the flashbacks; about halfway through a revelation is made that altered the poignancy of the story and changed the way I looked at Daphne and her relationships. I really loved how I was mostly just rooting for Daphne, there wasn't one person I wanted her to be with, I just wanted her to find her happily ever after. A great read that brought tears to my eyes.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of the book.

Easily my new favorite by Rebecca Serle!! She was already an auto-buy author but this latest just hit all the right notes for me!! An incredibly original premise, a hard to put down plot, INCREDIBLE disability/chronic illness rep, tons of twists I did not see coming and a beautiful love letter to LA that made me appreciate that city in a whole new light!

I was on the edge of my seat reading this book rooting for one guy all while wondering what would actually happen in the end and if my heart was in danger of breaking into teeny tiny pieces!! Thank you SOOO much to Simon & Schuster for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review. There is no question that this will be one of my very favorite reads of 2023!!

I had to pick this book up because I was intrigued by the premise and felt it was unique to most rom cons I read, so I was excited to dive in. The concept of having your dating life laid out for you by getting a note with a name and how long your relationship will last with them is something I have never thought about, and this book did a good job executing that into the story. I do believe the story was missing a little depth, or maybe something unexpected to happen. I also felt that some of the characters were undeveloped.

As a whole, the story was an enjoyable read, and it felt like this was more than a cute rom-com. This story is all about heart and making choices based on instincts and not solely on the facts. It is about finding happiness and not worrying about the timing of everything. The conclusion was unexpected but it wrapped up the story well. This book will tug on your heartstrings.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Atria Books for giving me a copy of the book.