E-galley Review: The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
Published by Berkley on June 27, 2023
Genres: Adult Contemporary Romance
Pages: 352
Source: the publisher
Format: E-galley
My Rating:
Goodreads
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Barnes & Noble, Buy on Audible

Blurb:

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.

An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

My Review

So, I’d heard such good things about this. Then the first time I picked it up, I was a little bored and unsure if I would go on. Well, I stopped at the wrong spot, because if I’d just started the next chapter, I would have been hooked! Because the second time I picked it up, I totally started to see what the reviews I’d skimmed before were talking about.

The love story was so good, but it was also so much more than that. Clementine in the present day was still reeling from the death of her aunt that she had been so close to. Her aunt had left her apartment to Clementine, which while wonderful in one way, it also had so many memories it was hard for her to deal with being there. And the morning she woke up and there was a strange man in the apartment, wow! That was crazy! But how it all unfolded with the things her aunt had told her about the magic in the apartment, well that was unique and so good! There were things I wondered about why one didn’t reach out to the other in the time between, but it made sense when I thought about it, as well as when the characters worked those things out for themselves.

The times that the two of them got to spend together in the apartment were perfect with banter and time spent together just the way I’d want to get to know someone myself. Then there were the little connections between the two when they didn’t really know the one they ran into, or at least one of them didn’t, and those were special too. And then when they had to reconnect in the present day, wow, it was perfect. Nothing was too overdramatic like so often happens, it just really seemed real for those moments.

Finally, I didn’t quite see what Clementine decided at the end coming until she did, but it made sense and tied in perfectly with Iwan/James’s journey as well.

A wonderful book, so glad I made the time to fit this e-galley into my reading schedule!