Monday Review of All That Was

All that Was by Tanya. E. Williams

I picked the perfect day to read this book. It was raining and gloomy with a chill in the air. Perfect for a book set in Seattle.

This book isn’t a quick light read. It’s one where you sink down into your reading chair with a cup of tea and a soft blanket and shut out the world kind of read.

When we meet Emily it doesn’t take long to realize she’s bottled up her grief over losing her parents so tight that it has taken over her life. Despite help offered and then refused she gets through her days thinking she is fine, though nothing will ever be good again.

Take heart reader, Emily embarks upon a life-changing experience when she agrees to archive the records of a historic church in Seattle. Hired by her law company as a first-year lawyer she gets the job to comb through centuries of old documents in a dark windowless room.

Emily doesn’t mind doing the work until memories of her parents begin to invade the space. How will she handle them when they won’t stop coming?

Elizabet, a spirit who has refused to move forward takes the reader on a journey similar to Emily’s. It’s not to be missed. Because of Elizabet the reader gets a view of what this church meant to people throughout the decades. The research on this book must have been time-consuming but every detail adds to the ambiance of the setting.

When Emily is forced to look back on her life, she has choices to make moving forward. That’s what this book is about, being afraid for a minute and having the courage to move forward.

There is much to enjoy about this book, so I don’t wish to give away much. It is a good literary women’s fiction book. This is a book about two worlds, but not fantasy, scary type fiction.

All that Was has a happy ending which is important to me.

Separated by a century. Bonded by loss. Will examining all that was invoke comfort or calamity?

Seattle, 2015. Emily Reed refuses to dwell on her emotions. When the first-year attorney is assigned a church archival project, she dives into the records to hide from her own heartache. But when she discovers her parents were married in this very chapel, she is forced to confront the grief she buried a decade ago.

After she died in 1935, Elizabet Thomas was devastated when her beloved husband wasn’t waiting for her on the other side. A lost soul, she’s wandered their church for the past eighty years, desperate to find him. And now she must persuade a young, living lawyer that the historic building needs to be preserved rather than sold and torn down.

Discovering a diary among the disarray in the building’s basement, Emily is first engrossed and then moved by the dead woman’s words. And as the fate of her home unravels, Elizabet realizes she and the grieving archivist have more in common than she ever would have guessed.

Can Emily and Elizabet save themselves and their cherished sanctuary?

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