ARC Review: The Seven Year Slip

I received this book for free (hey, thanks!) in exchange for an honest review. I promise that this does NOT affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. For real.

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Magical Realism
Published by Penguin Random House on June 27, 2023
Also by this author: Geekerella, The Princess and the Fangirl, The Dead Romantics
Format: eARC (352 pages) • Source: Publisher
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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.

I’ve loved Ashley Poston since her YA book days a few years ago. Her foray into “adult contemporary fiction with a sprinkle of magic” has been LOVELY so far – THE DEAD ROMANTICS was one of my favorite books last year and I can still remember the feeling of sitting on the amazing porch at our Airbnb and reading so much of it in one sitting. While that story gets the half-star edge over THE SEVEN YEAR SLIP, I clearly loved this one too.

The story centers around Clementine and her somewhat boring life in NYC, six months after her beloved aunt and travel partner passed away. She was willed her apartment and has been living there ever since, despite how painful it can be. Her aunt always said the apartment was a bit magical and Clementine finds out firsthand how true that was. Somehow timelines overlap, and you may return to your apartment one day and find yourself seven years in the past… yes, including whoever was living there seven years prior. One summer, that turns out to be Iwan, a gorgeous Southern guy that her aunt sublet the apartment to when she was overseas (oddly enough, with Clementine) at the time. The two connect very quickly but Clementine isn’t sure how to tell him exactly what’s happening with their time-related disconnect. Some other ~things~ progressed in this story that were not what I expected when I read the synopsis, but I actually liked it way better than what I predicted the story would be like.

There’s something so magical (kind of literally, since both of her adult fiction books feature magical realism and/or time travel in some capacity…) about her books and writing – I can never put them down once I start. My eyes were closing at the 90% mark and I let myself sleep… only to wake up 7 hours later and immediately finish the story off.

If I could nitpick about anything, I could have used a bit more of the romance to beef it up. I found it believable despite the somewhat instalove-ish connection they made. The book is around 350 pages so honestly even 20 more pages of the romance and the two of them connecting would have made this even better without pushing it on the length. Some things were very obvious to the reader but not to Clementine, which I THINK was done on purpose? So it’s hard for me to say those things were “predictable” necessarily… and there were a few things that did surprise me toward the end.

Poston’s premises are so unique – I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. What other way can she make a man inaccessible to the heroine? We already had a dead guy and a guy seven years in the past. What else can she think of?!

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