The Seven Year Slip

Ashley Poston must love unconventional relationships, and you know what? I can get behind that! Why would I want yet another story about two mostly normal people falling in love, when I can have a ghost in The Dead Romantics and a sweet guy who randomly appears in the MC’s magical, time-slip apartment in this one? C’mon … you’ve gotta be at least a little curious! 

Book publicist Clementine West has inherited her free-spirited Aunt Analea’s apartment after her unexpected death. She’s reeling from the loss of her confidante and travel buddy, with whom she’d go on adventures all over the world.  Being in the apartment now is a stark reminder of her loss and she’s left only with memories and the two rules Analea left her about the apartment:

One: Always take your shoes off by the door and …  Two: Never fall in love.

Analea always told Clementine that the apartment was magical and shared how she fell in love with someone she met during one of the apartment’s slips into a time seven years prior. Clementine has always been skeptical of the stories from her fanciful aunt until one day she opens the door of Apartment B4 (see what Poston did there? 😉) and finds a handsome, humble, auburn-haired man in the apartment now decorated with her aunt’s possessions from seven years ago.

After her initial shock, Clementine eventually lets this man, Iwan, stay since her aunt gave him permission to use the apartment while she’s traveling (she’s still alive seven years prior). Over the days, they talk and laugh, he cooks delicious food for her, and so begins the breaking of rule number two! 

As her apartment unpredictably bounces Clementine … or Lemon … as Iwan likes to call her, back and forth in time and fate makes their paths cross now seven years later, will she like this new Iwan, who now goes by his formal name James Ashton? Will he still like her? Her publishing company has all their hopes set on him now that he’s a highly successful chef shopping his new book, and her choices may make or break things for everyone who’s depending on her!

This is such a charmer. So fun, so sweet, full of likeable characters, palpable chemistry and some touching moments as well. There is one potential trigger, but it’s dealt with sensitively.  The story explores who we are initially and who we become over time, what identities we keep and which we evolve into, and who can’t relate to that, even without a magical time-slipping home?

If you want a thoughtful and swoony romance with a little touch of magic, I highly recommend this. Ashley Poston has become a go-to author for me!

★★★★ ½ 

Thanks to Berkley Publishing, NetGalley and author Ashley Poston for this DRC to honestly review. It’s now available.