I think I'm ready to review now, after having a lot of time to ponder my feelings. The Seven Year Slip is a book I'm going to continue to think about for a long time to come. I really didn't know how an HEA could be pulled off, with one lover in the past seven years, but wow Poston, she did it!! The casually magic apartment with the allusions to water color paints and how they mix up, and Clementine's own watercolor paintings were just lovely to listen to. Brittany Pressley does a great job on the narration, and whew i loved her Iwan voice A Lot. Iwan as a chef also, quite tasty, and Clementine getting to meet him as both younger, starry eyed new to NYC Iwan and then encountering him as James Ashton, celebrity chef, and getting to fall in love with them both, oh how it worked for me. This really encapsulated one of my favorite things of "we only have this night // time" because Clementine never really knew if she'd see Iwan again, if the apartment would bring them back together.

Okay, so here's where things got a little sticky for me, and they are spoilery, so do steer clear if you are going to read. I will content note grief // suicide

Spoiler

What didn't work so much for me was the reveal that Clementine's aunt Analea's past lover who she met thanks to the apartment turned out to be Iwan's family member...perhaps his grandma or mom? I can't recall now; and it made me so sad because basically Analea did not get an HEA, pined for her lover for forever, and then died by suicide. The queer dead aunt trope keeps popping up for me (see also Mrs. Nash's Ashes) and I don't know how I feel about that just right now