The Seven Year Slip

The Seven Year Slip is a 2023 romance novel by bestselling American novelist Ashley Poston. A work of magical realism about love, timing, and staying true to oneself, The Seven Year Slip centers on Clementine West, an overworked and grieving book publicist in New York City. Clementine has inherited a magical apartment from her late aunt and finds herself in a time slip where she meets a man living in the apartment seven years in the past. By employing many of the classic tropes of contemporary romance, Poston explores the complexities of loving someone capable of change. The Seven Year Slip incorporates themes such as The Acceptance of Change and Personal Growth, Reconciling Passion and Practicality, and The Complexities of Grief. 

This study guide refers to the Berkley e-book edition of the text.

Content Warning: This text features discussions of suicide.

Plot Summary

Clementine West no longer feels happy with her job as a publicist for the small publishing house Strauss & Adder, yet she knows it offers her the stability she has longed for in recent months. Six months prior, her Aunt Analea—with whom she was close and whom she often wanted to emulate—died of a likely intentional overdose and left Clementine in possession of her Upper East Side apartment. Analea had always claimed this apartment was magical. Though she tries to act normal as she goes with her friends and co-workers to a fancy restaurant in an attempt to get the chef to write a book for Strauss & Adder, Clementine is nevertheless consumed by her grief and so concerned with her future that her view of the present is obscured.

Analea had told Clementine that Apartment B4 was a time slip and would sometimes transport her seven years into the past to meet a previous resident of the apartment. Though in recent months, Clementine had thought of this as nothing but one of her aunt’s fantastical stories, she finds herself coming face to face with a stranger in her apartment. The stranger, a young man named Iwan, tells Clementine that Analea had sublet her apartment to him for the summer as she was traveling, and he was trying to get a job as a chef in the city. Clementine is initially hesitant about Iwan, trying to convince herself that time travel is impossible. Still, Clementine wants to stay in a time when Analea is still alive, so she lets Iwan stay.

Despite having few things in common, Clementine and Iwan quickly bond and form a friendship. However, Clementine is reminded that her aunt had a rule to never fall in love in the apartment, as she had previously fallen in love with a woman seven years in the past and it had ended badly. Nevertheless, Clementine still begins to fall for Iwan as he falls for her. They talk about his great passion for cooking, and Clementine wishes to be as passionate about something as he is. Remembering the lively woman she used to be, she goes back to her old hobby of painting and starts allowing herself to want what will make her happy.

When Clementine comes home to her apartment one day, it has returned back to the present. She searches the internet for any signs of Iwan but is unable to find anything about him until she learns that he has become a successful chef with whom her publishing house is trying to collaborate. Clementine is put onto the team for proposing a bid for his book, yet when she meets Iwan in her own time, she is shocked to see how much he has changed in the present day. She notices how the way he speaks about food and cooking is completely different, and she wonders where his passion has gone.

Clementine continues to grapple with the person Iwan once was and the one he is in the present as she is transported back and forth through time and faces issues with his book’s publication. After spending more time together, Clementine also begins to see the ways Iwan has stayed the same, and she wonders how he has felt about her over the last seven years.

Much like Iwan, Clementine struggles with reconciling who she was in the past and who she is in the present, along with figuring out who she wants to be rather than who others want her to be. At the opening of his new restaurant, Clementine confronts Iwan about how much he has changed, and the two fight about the nature of change and whether or not it is always good or bad. Clementine is sent back into the past one last time, where she tells the Iwan of seven years ago about the magic of the apartment and how they will not see each other for another seven years, when they will both be changed.

Clementine quits her job without any future plans once she finally realizes it does not make her happy. Iwan finds Clementine and shows her the changes he made to his restaurant after their fight as he realizes that she is partially right about him changing but also knows that some of the changes he has gone through were natural and for the better. The two confess their love for one another and reconcile the people they once were with the people they are in the present. Clementine moves out of the magical apartment, finally recognizing that change is okay because the love that surrounds her memories there will always stay with her.