The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

Format: Kindle
Read: Jan 2025

I enjoyed this one! I read it in a few nights, and even spent some time reading it during the day which only happens with the books I’m glued to! The time travel element was a nice twist, and I found it more thoughtful and balanced than the average rom-com.

The story deals with grief alongside the romance element. Clementine has recently lost the aunt she was very close to and subsequently inherited her apartment. The apartment had some kind of magical time portal, where it sometimes existed seven years in the past and seems to primarily do this for matchmaking its occupants! It sends Clementine back seven years to meet Iwan, the young man staying there for the summer.

I like that the author doesn’t make romance the story’s centre, instead, it’s mostly about Clementine’s journey of self-discovery, even if not everything about that aspect worked for me. There was so much buildup about how ambitious and great at her job she is and then, all of a sudden, she decides she isn’t happy without a previous hint or proper explanation. It felt really out of the blue, so it wasn’t satisfying for me.

I think part of the problem there is that I didn’t really understand who the 22-year-old Clementine was, why she was so apparently heartbroken she decided to become a career woman instead of a free spirit. There wasn’t any hint of a wild child in the 29-year-old version! I could never connect the two, it was too much telling and not showing in this aspect.

The main characters are pretty standard rom-com types (including their careers and their names), but I expect that, I wouldn’t say Clementine had a distinct personality and she always does what you’d expect in the story. Iwan felt like a bit of a manic-pixie-dream-boy type at first, I just don’t believe people like this exist, but he eventually got more rounded out. I preferred the 32-year-old Iwan to the 25-year-old one, but then I am 37 myself!

The “seven-year slip” allows the characters to grow and change over time, and recognises that that can be difficult but also necessary in relationships. I appreciated that Clementine had a hard time with how different the seven years older Iwan was, and the story doesn’t have the arguably less “romantic” version of him change back in any way. I found that refreshingly mature for something in this genre!

I did find it a bit strange, and maybe a bit contradictory, that we’re simultaneously told that he pined after her for seven years (knowing she existed and was seven years away) but also he’s been with countless other women in the meantime. It left me with the impression that his promiscuity was just meant to demonstrate his desirability (obviously he’s super handsome, charming and famous). I guess it’s pretty normal when I think about it, they did only meet each other a few times so why would he hang around celibate for seven years in the hope things might work out? But, this awkward element of the timeline gets so quickly glossed over so it felt very clunky and was not emotionally satisfying for me! Now I consider it, I was more invested in how the time travel side of things would tie up than whether or not Clementine and Iwan got together.

The side characters were barely people, just loose stereotypes. I know it’s a trope of the genre, and just something I put up with that bothers me every time! “Cool & quirky” friends that are this availability always remove any realism and relatability from this kind of book! Maybe people like this do exist if you’re in your late twenties and live in a major city, I don’t know.

Overall though, I feel like I’ve been quite negative but honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by this, and I read it very quickly so my enjoyment level was high! I will keep an eye out for more books by Ashley Poston!