The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

5 Stars Apr 24, 2025

My review

5/5 stars

Clementine moves into her aunt's old apartment and starts to experience the magic that her aunt used to tell her about as a kid. She finds a strange man living in her apartment one day and realises that he's seven years in the past. Her aunt always told her never to fall in love in the apartment, but Iwan is making that quite challenging.

I was cautiously curious about reading this book. Everyone raved about it and a book rarely lives up to that kind of hype. It turns out, however, that this book is deserving of all the hype it gets. I adored every part of this book and can't think of anything I didn't like.

Clementine was a wonderful lead character. She was charmingly vulnerable, warm, endearing and loveable. Her relationship with her aunt was beautiful to read, and she was clearly a wonderful friend to the secondary characters in the book. Her passion for figuring out her way in life was infecgtious and had me rooting for her from start to finish. Watching her relationship with very swoon-worthy Iwan (who, himself, was also brilliantly written) was fantastically romantic and I loved every minute.

I expected the romance, even if how much I loved it was a pleasant surprise, but what I wasn't expecting was the tender exploration of grief and self-discovery after grief. The author writes with such grace and gentility on the subject. It was an emotional read, but it was done in such a way that it never felt traumatic. She did a wonderful job of balancing the whole spectrum of raw human emotion with a sense of magical realism.

In short, I adored this book. It has the potential to become a new favourite, but that will depend on how much it sticks with me over the coming weeks. This is the first full novel I've read by this author and I'm now keen to read more.

Book blurb

Six months ago, Clementine West had the worst day of her life. So, she came up with a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, take no risks. And it’s been working.

That is until one day she finds a strange man standing in her kitchen. A man with kind eyes, a crooked smile, and a recipe for the perfect lemon meringue pie. The kind of man that, before everything, she could have fallen for …

He’s perfect but for one thing: he lives in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact.

This should be impossible, but Clementine used to love impossible things. And maybe, just maybe, she will again. After all, love is never a matter of time – but a matter of timing.