This has an intriguing concept: an apartment that periodically slips in time into seven years in the past, with no particular logic as to how or why. You walk in one day from getting groceries and surprise, someone else hot lives there!
Clementine is a book publicist in NYC who's recently moved into her aunt Analea's apartment, which she's been warned about does periodic time travel for no known reason. Analea has recently well, killed herself (sorry, but has to be said) and Clementine was very close to her, and she's still grieving. She did hear that Analea had a time travel affair with the previous tenant, Vera, years ago, but somehow things didn't work out IRL for vague reasons. Therefore, Analea warned her that time travel romance doesn't work out.*
* Disclaimer: from what you read of the book later, I think this was more Analea's personal issues than anything regarding time travel?
Clementine finds her apartment slipping back into the past, when her aunt was on a trip and the apartment was being borrowed by another fellow, a friendly dishwasher/budding chef named Iwan. Iwan is hot and friendly and their apartment visits go great, if you know what I mean. But what about that seven year gap? Well, coincidentally in Clementine's time period, her agency is recruiting a guy for a book who turns out to be Iwan, albeit he's using his given/more generic name of James Ashton (Iwan being the middle name**) and he's become quite a budding star, even if he seems mysteriously less enthusiastic than he used to be. He certainly remembers Clementine, though.
** I give the author credit for thwarting the whole "why don't you just Google him in your time?" concept, even if one does wonder why he'd be doing the name change IRL.
Beyond that, this is sweet and Iwan/James is lovely, but the plot doesn't really have super much in the way of conflict, the seven year gap obviously doesn't really cause any issues in their connecting/reconnecting, etc. I did enjoy a reveal that I'll discuss below the spoiler cut ***, but then there's another reveal that gets extreme short shrift and I did not like that.**** This kind of seems like one of those books where the angst is about jobs more than anything else, as Clementine seems to be feeling "meh" about hers and James/Iwan may have a bit of his own issues. Time travel isn't as much of a factor as I assumed other than there being some duration between past sightings, for whatever reason.
In the end, the romance is sweet, but this ended up not being all that memorable for me? I feel like it needed more drama, and it had the potential for that, but it doesn't really go there. How would a seven-year time gap affect your relationship? What problems might that cause and how do you resolve those? What happened in the meantime for the guy does come up, but not extensively. Also wouldn't have minded hearing more about Analea and Vera. I think I just wanted more than this book felt like doing. Maybe that's on me, though.
Three stars.
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*** Analea's time travel ex, Vera, is Iwan's mother. I loved this reveal, but wish more had been done with it. I guess there's not much to do after Analea's dead, but still.
**** On page 305, it sounds like time travel allows Clementine to see Analea again as she comes home from her trip seven years ago--but other than she shows up, we don't get to see or read anything more about this!!! Why not?!?
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