Review By: Anonymous
Published: 2024
Genres: Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Magical Realism
Audience: Grade 12, Adult
Number of Stars: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Goodreads Link: Expiration Dates
Content Warnings: Emotional intensity, themes of heartbreak and uncertainty.
Publisher’s Summary
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.
Review
Expiration Dates is a contemporary romance with a touch of magical realism that follows Daphne Bell, a woman whose love life is ruled by mysterious slips of paper that predict exactly how long each relationship will last. She learns early to accept these timelines as truth and builds her life around that certainty. When she meets a man whose name appears on a note with no expiration date, Daphne’s entire belief system begins to shift. What starts as a love story becomes a deeper exploration of fear, choice, and what it means to risk your heart when the future feels uncertain. Very powerful themes.
Listening to this book felt like watching someone confront the safety they’ve built around themselves. The premise is intriguing, but what really stayed with me was how the story explores the way people use certainty to avoid pain. The themes of vulnerability, self-worth, and the tension between safety and risk are woven through the story in a way that feels emotionally honest. The narration was engaging, and the characters felt real, even when the magical elements made the plot feel larger than life.
There are no illustrations, and the cover is more likely to attract adult readers than younger teens. Mature high school students who enjoy romance with emotional depth might still be drawn to it, especially if they’ve listened to Serle’s other titles like In Five Years. In a school setting, this book connects well to SEL topics like relationships, decision-making, and identity. A useful activity could be journaling about what students feel they are afraid to risk, or having a discussion about how fear influences choices.
Overall, I would recommend Expiration Dates to adult readers and mature teens who enjoy emotionally driven romance, but I would caution readers who prefer lighter, less intense stories as it might be too intense.
📝 SEL & Classroom Connections
This novel provides a sophisticated backdrop for Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) discussions with older students (Grade 12):
- Decision-Making & Fear: Use Daphne’s journey to discuss how fear of a negative outcome can paralyze our current choices.
- Identity & Agency: Explore the prompt: If you knew exactly when a friendship or relationship would end, would you change how you acted during it?
- Journaling Activity: Have students write about a “risk” they are currently avoiding and weigh the safety of the status quo against the potential growth of taking the leap.
