Happy July! Summer is in full swing, and I am loving the warmth. I’ve been reading away again this month and am now sitting around 32 books so far this year. And since it’s Summer time, I’ve been in the mood for some light beach reads. So, that’s what I chose for this month! I’ve seen this one all over Instagram and Tiktok since it came out last year, so I had to give it a chance. With that being said, this month I read The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston. And to accompany this one, I made a Leap Year cocktail.
Leap Year Recipe
2oz Gin
0.5oz Grand Marnier
0.5oz Sweet Vermouth
1oz Clementine Juice*
1 dash Lemon Juice
1 twist Lemon
*This is an optional ingredient.
In a cocktail shaker with ice, add all ingredients and shake. Strain into a chilled martini glass, garnish, and enjoy!
This month, I wanted to add lemon juice to my cocktail as my special ingredient. But then I realized that the cocktail I picked already had lemon juice. So, instead of using the main character’s nickname, Lemon, I decided to use her full name, Clementine, and added clementine juice. However, you could also easily just add orange juice if you can’t find clementines. This was a great inclusion, in my opinion. It worked well with the other ingredients and it brought this beautiful colour that matched the book cover so perfectly.
And holy smokes was this cocktail ever delicious! This is definitely one of my new favourites. It was so well balanced and was just the right amount of sweet. I think without the clementine juice this one would likely be a bit liquor heavy for me, especially since gin is not my favourite spirit. Special shout out to my in-laws for bringing us home a fantastic bottle of gin from Hawaii with a more citrus-y and less juniper-y taste than typical gin that paired perfectly with the clementine juice for this cocktail. Anywho, if you’re into more traditional martinis you’d probably enjoy this one without the juice as well. But I highly suggest adding the juice for a smoother, sweeter taste. And I absolutely recommend giving this one a try!
The Seven Year Slip Synopsis
(from book cover)
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 blend like watercolours. 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.
Review
“It’s never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”
Well, we’ve got another one. I feel like I am on a streak of 3.5s this year with the occasional 3 or 4 sprinkled in. Maybe it’s me? I don’t know. Nothing is really wowing me this year so far, I suppose. But oh well, let’s get into this one. The Seven Year Slip has your favourite romance tropes and all the cuteness you could ask for. But it felt a little forced to me and some aspects just irked me.
Let’s start with the characters in The Seven Year Slip. Clementine was your typical romance female main character. She’s got a high-stress office job that she excels at and loves(?), barely has time to fall in love, and her hobby is painting. So, while she is cute and relatable, she also felt like a cookie-cutter mold to me. She ticked all the typical boxes and didn’t bring any new perspective to the romance genre, in my opinion. I still liked her though. Again, she was relatable and had somewhat unique quirks and flaws that I enjoyed. But overall, she felt like any other main character from any other romance.
Our male main character, Iwan, was about the same. I wouldn’t say he was wholly stereotypical to the genre, but he was also what you expect from the main love interest. But as someone who married a line cook from a restaurant she once worked at, the chef thing was cute to me and it felt true to his character. I also liked how both the main characters were working through grief and how this was depicted and dealt with in the novel. It felt quite genuine and showed some more depth for both characters. While a loved one dying can be a trope in romances, I still liked the layers that processing that trauma added to Clementine and Iwan and the heartfelt way it was handled in the story. But trigger warning for those who need it, this novel does deal with the topic of suicide.
Beyond our MCs, the side characters were quite well done. They had separate, unique voices and showcased the only diversity in the novel. I enjoyed the diverse aspects of these side characters, but it did again feel a little like ticking boxes. Female main character with a gay best friend? Check, but let’s make her besties lesbians to be different. Male main character with a best friend of colour? Check. I know I sound very negative right now, but I did actually like these characters and I appreciated that their diverseness wasn’t their only character trait and that there was thought behind their deeper personalities.
Moving away from the characters, the writing in The Seven Year Slip was quite good. Poston has a great voice for telling this type of story and I enjoyed the way the novel flowed. I also thought the dialogue was done very well, it seemed natural and real. My only issue with the writing was that it just felt forced sometimes. I’d be reading along and then come to a paragraph that was clearly trying to be deep and meaningful. And that would happen every few pages at minimum. And while I appreciate the message and love a good emotional line, it was a bit much and interrupted the natural flow and ease of the story for me. Again, it just made the novel feel less genuine and more forced.
And speaking of negatives, my biggest issue with The Seven Year Slip was the insta love. We spend the first chapters repeatedly reading that Clementine has never fallen in love and will never fall in love. Only for her to meet a guy and fall head over heels in like a day. And then for the two of them to fully start acting like a couple when they’ve met literally 3 times. I know this comes with the genre sometimes, but it just irked me. I feel like if Poston had taken out Clementine’s lack of desire to fall in love it wouldn’t have changed the story at all and would have made the insta love at least a bit more realistic.
My second problem is the unbelievability of some things. And no, I am not talking about the apartment that time travels. I am referencing two things. One, she tells her friends she met a guy named Iwan but isn’t sure when she’ll see him again. Only for them all to meet a guy named Iwan and her friends don’t put two and two together? How common a name is that in New York really? And two, you’re telling me your apartment travels through time and brings you to a cute boy and you’re not immediately telling your best friends this? I don’t understand the secrecy. I would 100% be telling my best friend if I randomly time travelled and knew it was real. But even though these are just small things, they did detract from the relatability and believability of the story.
Other than that, I did notice that with the inherently interesting timeline of The Seven Year Slip some things felt like plot holes during the novel. But I think most of these were addressed by the end, so while it was nagging me throughout I don’t have a huge issue with this since they were resolved. On that same note, the magical realism of the time slip/travel was really intriguing and a unique concept I haven’t read before in a romance. So, I did enjoy that aspect of the novel and it made me excited to keep reading and find out how exactly things would play out.
Overall, I liked The Seven Year Slip. It was cute, fun, and heartwarming. But while the plot was absolutely unique, the characters weren’t though they were still fleshed out and interesting. I had a lot of pros with this novel, but also some glaring cons that brought my ranking down for this one. And as a reminder, I do rank my books with regard to their genre in mind. So, for me this is a 3.5 for a romance, which I generally allow more freedom for as they’re typically meant as light, nice reads. That being said, I definitely recommend this novel if you like romances! And I absolutely recommend trying this month’s cocktail as it was a real winner!
My Rating:
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Happy Place, The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, and The Christmas Wish if you liked this one!
Teghann
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