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Five Days

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Five Days

By: Douglas Kennedy
Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
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From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Pursuit of Happiness and The Moment comes a poignant and profound American love story.

How long does it take to fall in love?

For twenty years, Laura has been a good wife and a good mother. She's supported her husband through redundancy, she's worried about her son, she's encouraged her daughter.

She's stopped thinking about all the places she'd like to go and all the books she'd like to talk about.

She's not unhappy, exactly. She's not that self-indulgent. As anyone would tell you, Laura is wonderfully constant, caring, selfless. She's certainly an expert at putting on a brave face.

But a chance meeting in a hotel lobby - and the five days that follow - remind Laura of the young woman she used to be - and the woman she could have become.

Is it ever too late to have the life you wanted? Or do we owe it to ourselves to pursue the promise of happiness?

From 'the absolute master of love stories with heart-stopping twists' (The Times), Five Days is a compelling novel about how life can change with one brief encounter.

 Contemporary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Marriage Heartfelt
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Critic reviews

This modern Brief Encounter asks what it is that stops most of us from instigating change. Throughout we are kept in exquisite suspense, waiting to see whether the beleaguered pair will seize their chance of happiness.
Totally, blissfully absorbing
Kennedy can effortlessly inhabit the voice of the female narrator, and Laura’s dilemma will leave you absolutely gripped to the final page.
A gripping emotional rollercoaster; pressing so many buttons it’s likely to have readers examining their own what-might-have-beens.
Possesses a Hitchcockian approach to this narrative hub; tension and twists are administered in equal measure in order to retain readers’ emotional attachment to otherwise domestic scenarios. The ordinary becomes, through his carefully plotting, extraordinary. Kennedy’s trick is to pull all the strings of thriller writing in the romance genre… a novel that’s both moving and realistic as it broaches that awful chasm between what we could be and what we presently are.
It is a tribute to Kennedy’s skill that he can take such a hackneyed situation and make the protagonists richly three-dimensional… As love fizzles out, Kennedy finds something redemptive in the triumph of hope over experience.
Totally, blissfully absorbing
Kennedy can effortlessly inhabit the voice of the female narrator, and Laura’s dilemma will leave you absolutely gripped to the final page
A gripping emotional rollercoaster; pressing so many buttons it’s likely to have readers examining their own what-might-have-beens.
[Kennedy] possesses a Hitchcockian approach to this narrative hub; tension and twists are administered in equal measure in order to retain readers’ emotional attachment to otherwise domestic scenarios. The ordinary becomes, through his carefully plotting, extraordinary. Kennedy’s trick is to pull all the strings of thriller writing in the romance genre… a novel that’s both moving and realistic as it broaches that awful chasm between what we could be and what we presently are.’
All stars
Most relevant

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Five days...it felt like much longer! I was sort of pleased for the happy ending but almost past caring since the pace of the story was so slow.

Would you be willing to try another book from Douglas Kennedy? Why or why not?

Yes, because I've read them all so far.

What does Jennifer Woodward bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

A greater sense of the main character's bewilderment.

Do you think Five Days needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No, it's sufficient by itself.

Not my favourite of Kennedy's novels

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