Ashley Poston is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics. A native of South Carolina, she lives in a small gray house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fan fiction. You can find her online at AshPoston.com and on Instagram @HeyAshPoston. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it. For Clementine West, that means burying her head in her work as a book publicist, being practical, and forgetting the silly things her beloved aunt Analea taught her—like living wide and chasing the moon. Clementine would rather stay grounded and keep her heart safe. For the last six months, she's done just that. But when she moves into her late aunt's apartment and finds a strange man standing in the kitchen—a man with kind eyes, a Southern drawl, and a taste for lemon pies—her well-laid plans begin to fall apart. Because he's the type of man who, before it all, she would've fallen head over heels for. And she still might. Except he exists in the past. Seven years in the past, 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 like watercolors. She also said that love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing. And Clementine fears she may be seven years too late.
A love letter to New York, and a love letter to falling in love with your life, your lover, and who you are and want to be, The Seven Year Slip is a charming and hopeful read. I immediately fell in love with the magical realism concept, and how Iwan and Clementine are falling in love with one another in a blip in time—where Clementine is in the present, and she keeps meeting the Iwan of seven years before. Poston takes full advantage of this concept, detailing the hardship of falling in love in general, and then trying to rectify the Iwan of the past with the Iwan she meets in the present. All at the same time, Clementine is also experiencing the seven-year-itch phenomenon—but instead of experiencing it in a marriage or similar relationship, she's experiencing it with her career. I love how this story combines Clementine's journey of self-growth with her journey to love and understanding what timing means in a relationship. Poston takes this super fun and inventive concept and writes so compassionately about real experiences and real feelings that the whole book feels like a special type of bottled magic.
I had the chance to attend an event at Joseph-Beth, where Ashley Poston visited on her book tour! One of the things she said during the event that resonated with me was that in romance novels, it's important to see the main characters building and maintaining relationships of love with other people in their lives—such as family relationships, friendships, and anything in between. It's much easier to get on board with a romance between the MCs when we see them maintaining different relationships that involve love with the other people in their lives. I think this is really why contemporary romance as a genre speaks to me, because there's a much larger focus on those relationships as well as the main one, and I felt that Poston focused wonderfully on Clementine's friendships and family relationships in The Seven Year Slip. Fans of the found family trope will definitely feel their hearts glow reading about Clementine's relationhip with Fiona and Drew, and the budding friendship she shares with Juliette. Not to mention how Clementine finds one of her aunt's old flames, and the way she maintains her relationship with her parents, too.
The biggest relationship that colors all of the pages is the one Clementine shares with her aunt, Analea. It's clear from the first few pages that Analea has passed, and her cause of death isn't shared until halfway through the book. But what's clear on every page is the grief Clementine has over losing her aunt so soon. It's written so compassionately, as Poston shared that she shares the same type of grief as Clementine regarding losing an older family member too soon. I love how Poston's romance novels so far are an exploration of love as well as an exploration of grief and loss. The writing all the way through is so hopeful and romantic, but doesn't shy away from the difficult aspects of grief, such as the inability to cry or talk about it. The grief doesn't overwhelm the book by any means, but it is a huge part of Clementine's journey back to Iwan, and there were several moments that almost made me cry, even though I haven't experienced anything close to what Clementine or Poston have. All-in-all, this book is so beautifully written, and it just had me feeling all of the emotions.
I can't wait to hear more about Poston's next project, and will certainly be reading everything she does next. Until then, you can find her online at AshPoston.com and on Instagram @HeyAshPoston. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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