The Seven Year Slip

Ashley Poston’s novel The Seven Year Slip follows Clementine “Clem” West, a burned-out book publicist in New York City who inherits her late aunt Analea’s apartment—and with it, a peculiar magic tied to the space. The apartment occasionally slips seven years into the past, allowing Clem to encounter Iwan, an aspiring chef subletting the place in that earlier era. Their meetings, separated by seven years and a shared kitchen, spark a romance complicated by the fact that they exist in different timelines and that Clem knows the version of the future Iwan cannot see. The novel is structured around two parallel worlds colliding through the apartment’s time slip, a mechanic Clem’s aunt once described as love finding you when you least expect it. Poston uses the seven-year gap to explore grief, ambition, and the question of whether a person can truly change their fate. Clem’s present-day life in publishing, her struggle to finish a memoir left by her aunt, and her growing attachment to Iwan—who is in 2016 while she is in 2023—drive the emotional tension. The narrative alternates between Clem’s current timeline in New York and the past where she meets Iwan, gradually revealing how their connection ripples across both periods. Poston’s book is a contemporary romance with speculative elements, published in 2023. It is not a self-help or nonfiction title. Its central conceit—a rent-controlled apartment that slips seven years backward—anchors a story about second chances, the fear of repeating family patterns, and the possibility that love can arrive at the wrong time yet still be worth pursuing. The novel’s specificity lies in that time-bending apartment, the publishing world Clem inhabits, Iwan’s culinary dreams, and the emotional puzzle of two people who can only meet when the apartment allows it.