The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
Contemporary/Magical Realism
June 27, 2023, by Berkley
ARC
Review by Angela
This book surprised me in all the best ways. I adored The Dead Romantics, released last year, but I think I might just love this book a little bit more.
As with the Dead Romantics, this is another grief book, set in a magical apartment in the modern day, with seven-year slips in time. This is also a romance, with a lovely developing relationship between a grieving book publicist and a charming, ambitious chef. Clementine works for a small but mighty publisher and loves her job. She’s also very good at it. She works with her two closest friends, and they are great at keeping her social life full and her mind off of the death of her beloved aunt. But she is still grieving and misses the vibrant, outgoing woman who was also her travel partner and best friend.
Aunt Analea had always told her stories of her magical apartment, which often slips seven years back and forth in time to bring people together. But it’s not until Clementine comes home from work to the apartment her aunt left her after her death and finds a handsome stranger casually hanging out that she realizes the magic is real. Iwan is staying for the summer at her aunt’s invitation and is looking for a job in the city. It doesn’t take long for Clementine to realize she has slipped seven years into the past.
This is such an intricate, complex story. Time slips back and forth, meeting a soulmate in his past life, and then finding him in present-day only to realize that he has lived seven years of experiences and is a different person. Clementine, or Lemon, falls in love with Iwan between getting-to-know-you conversations, intimate dinners, and sensual kisses. But she never knows what time period she’ll be in when she enters her front door. Then she meets a chef with who her publishing company desperately wants to sign to a deal, and she discovers that the Iwan from her seven-year slip in time has accomplished all his dreams in the years since, and she doesn’t know what to do with that.
I absolutely adored the romance in this story, but what I truly loved is the relationship between Clementine and her aunt. Clem’s memories of her aunt and their time together lend sweetness and a sense of enchantment to the story, and her journey through the stages of grief as she reconciles those memories and feelings with the way her aunt died were both heartwarming and sad. But I loved that she embraced such pure love and acceptance from someone so important to her, and was able to see that in the end her aunt, even with all of her boldness and daring, was still just a woman who experienced love and loss, ups and downs.
I think the ending and HEA were just about perfect, and I enjoyed the little surprise at the identity of a certain character who was important to Analea. I gobbled this book up in one day and have not one single regret at all the things I set aside to make that happen. The Seven Year Slip was a lovely surprise and I read the last word with a smile on my face.
Highly recommend.
Grade- A
Content notes- grief, off-page death of family members, mentions of suicide
I will definitely be giving this a try, Angela! Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm.