The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: June 27, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Book Review
Clementine, after experiencing the worst day of her life, devises a plan to protect her heart: work hard, find a worthy love interest, and hold onto her dream of chasing the moon. Despite some challenges, this plan has been successful until she encounters a peculiar man in her late aunt’s kitchen. He possesses gentle eyes, a Southern accent, and a fondness for lemon pies—the type of man she would have fallen for previously. However, there’s a catch: he belongs to the past, precisely seven years ago, while she resides seven years ahead. Trapped in a timeless apartment, Clementine fears the consequences of allowing her heart to be ensnared once again, realizing that love transcends time, but its timing is crucial.
After reading and loving Ashley Poston’s The Dead Romantics last year, I couldn’t wait to read The Seven Year Slip, and it did not disappoint! It features Poston’s signature warmth that radiates off the page. She delicately balances joy and sorrow. I laughed and cried while reading this, but I couldn’t for a minute put it down.
Like The Dead Romantics, grief is a major theme. Clementine is struggling between mourning her late aunt and balancing the demands of her current job. At twenty-nine she feels stuck in her life. Her aunt was a force of nature who introduced Clementine to travel as a child and was a fixture in her life. Without her, Clementine feels adrift.
The magical portion of the story lies within the apartment Clementine inherits. It transports her, seemingly randomly to seven years in the past when she meets aspiring chef, Iwan. Past Iwan is an absolute delight. He has such a zest for life and joy in him that is completely contagious. But in the present, Clementine has never met Iwan and when she does, she struggles to rationalize the person that he was seven years ago with the person he is now.
Told entirely in the first-person from Clementine’s perspective, The Seven Year Slip is a cozy, heartwarming story. If you’re looking for a thoughtful and emotional romance to spend an afternoon engrossed in, this one is for you!
Thank you to Berkley Romance, PRH Audio, and Netgalley for the advanced copy! All opinions are my own!
Synopsis from Goodreads
Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.
So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.
And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.
Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.
Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.
After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.
About the Author
Ashley Poston started writing when she was in middle school and never stopped. She graduated from the University of South Carolina and went on to work in the publishing industry as both a social media coordinator and then a marketing designer before she became a full-time author. Her young adult novels have appeared on the Indie NextList multiple times, and have been featured in Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Entertainment Weekly, Hypable, Buzzfeed, and in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Her first adult novel, The Dead Romantics, was Good Morning America’s July Book Club Pick, Barnes & Noble’s Fiction Pick for July, an Amazon Editor choice, and one of Publisher’sWeekly’s Best Romances of 2022, and both a New York TimesNotable Book of 2022 and a BestRomance Novel of 2022. It is also a USA Today and New York Times bestseller. When not writing, she plays Dungeons & Dragons and reads copious amounts of fanfic. She bides her time between New York and South Carolina, and all the bookstores between.
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Erin Evelyn Reads 