The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

Posted on 2 May 2023

I first encountered Ashley Poston’s writing relatively recently when someone recommended The Dead Romantics, which was not at all what I expected.

The Seven Year Slip is the story of Clementine, a publicist at a publisher. She spends more time working and perfecting her art than getting a life after a few not-so-great relationships. At one point she had a different dream, but it was derailed and she never took another look at it. Her beloved aunt, an adventurer who encouraged Clementine to travel and see the world, has recently died, leaving her the apartment she lived in for many years. However, as she was so fond of telling her niece, the apartment is special. At certain times you will find that you are no longer in the apartment in the present, but seven years in the past.

Grieving for her aunt, she is more than a little surprised to arrive home one day to find a stranger in her apartment. It turns out, this stranger is not in her apartment now, this seven-year slip has happened and whoever this strange man is, he’s someone Clementine has already met.

As the story continues, we learn more about Iwan, this ambitious man who is the son of a friend of Clementine’s aunt. He has dreams of being a famous chef and is in the city to interview to become a dishwasher (not the mechanical type), it’s his way in to the restaurant business. While they are together he introduces her to his favourite foods and his concept of what makes food special – the memories it inspires…he also gives Clementine what I think is the most endearing nickname, Lemon. And though she does her best to resist, there is something inexplicable linking them. She is fighting it, but her feelings for Iwan are growing, despite being the only one in the situation who is aware that it can never go anywhere in the time they are existing.

Meanwhile, in her life outside the time slip, Clementine realises she doesn’t want to be the person she has been working towards becoming. Her boss has recently told her that she is now lined up for a massive promotion that could make her career, the thing she believes she has been working towards for the last seven years. All she has to do in order to prove that she is the person they are looking for is persuade an up-and-coming celebrity chef, James, to write his new recipe book with her company.

As Lemon and Iwan in the past/present grow closer, and Clementine in the present realises she is no longer as happy in her job, she is also building a bond with this chef who initially appears to be cold towards her…but there is a very good reason for that if you believe in coincidences!

Funnily enough, as with The Dead Romantics (which I still think is a bit of an homage to Just Like Heaven – the 2005 film with Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon), I guessed the twist relatively early on in my reading of the book. However, this did not take away from my enjoyment, nor did it stop me from rooting for Clementine to finally find her path and realise what she wanted. The idea that she would get some kind of happily ever after, whatever that looked like for her, was everything.

It was a fun read, scattered with moving moments, and though it did rely quite heavily on the old adage “it’s a small world” she’s not wrong.

The number seven is a very common factor in this book, making me wonder if it’s in any way connected with the common saying about the replication of our cells and how we’re not the same person we were seven years ago. Of course, this saying is bunkum, but the idea of it is wonderful.

Overall, an enjoyable book that makes me want to reread The Dead Romantics again. The concept is creative, it was a time travel book without all the messy ‘You can’t meet yourself in the past/future’ elements, because it was restricted to that one specific moment and that one particular location.