All We Have Is Time
Amy Tordoff
Hardcover / eBook
ISBN: 978-1668068045
Atria Books, July 2026, 352 pgs

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another book review! This month, we’re slowing things down a little and watching the years go by from the perspective of a cursed immortal who doesn’t know what she’s living for, until she meets a time traveler who steals her heart—that’s right, it’s All We Have Is Time by Amy Tordoff!

All We Have Is Time mainly follows the journey of Beatrix Lancourt, a fifteenth-century English peasant who makes a terrible bargain with a fae for everlasting life. Scorned by her family and loved ones, and shunned from her village, Beatrix spends her days barely surviving in the streets of fifteenth-century London, wondering each day if today is the day she finally sells her soul to the faerie in order to end it all. Then, while attending a play at the Globe Theater (yes, the Shakespeare one), she fumbles a pickpocketing attempt against an oblivious noble named Simon, who charms her into a tour of the city. What Beatrix doesn’t realize is that Simon is actually a time traveler from the twenty-third century with a secret of his own. When the two run into each other again one hundred years later, it begins a melancholic romance spanning two continents and seven centuries.

The first thing that really struck me about All We Have Is Time was the immaculate pairing of love and grief that steadily flows throughout the book. Beatrix and Simon’s relationship with each other, as well as other secondary characters, is beautifully presented, and there are multiple moments that will leave you with an aching pain in your chest. Tordoff does an amazing job of bringing the characters to life, mainly through a series of vignettes set around notable events of the past (the Frozen Faire in London when the Thames froze over, Carnevale di Venezia, VE-Day, Woodstock, and more). Many of these vignettes also offer brief (yet richly fulfilling) glimpses of Beatrix’s more ephemeral relationships. It reminded me a lot of the video game Lost Odyssey, or the novel This Is How You Lose the Time War.

The other thing I thought Tordoff did an excellent job of was researching all the little details to make Beatrix’s passage through time convincing. Whether it was the subtle changes in speaking patterns, the attention to clothing choices, or just environmental descriptions of architecture or the type of food available, it felt like the world surrounding Beatrix and Oliver was just as much a part of the story as their passage through it. The combination of all this made the pages fly by in a way only very good writing can accomplish and left me with the sense that I was time traveling myself by being allowed to witness their interactions.

I will caution you as a reader, though, that this is very much not a fast-paced action SF story, and it does flip back and forth between Beatrix’s and Oliver’s perspectives pretty regularly once the story gets going (as well as different time periods), so you’ll need to pay attention a bit and be prepared for a more meandering journey. That being said, the perspective and time changes never felt like they pulled me out of the story and actually did a really good job of illustrating the sporadic nature of their relationship and what that meant for its growth. In addition, you’ll probably want to keep some tissues nearby, because there are definitely more than a few tugs at the heartstrings contained within these pages.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading All We Have Is Time because at its core, it is a story asking what it means to be human, and whether the prize of love is worth the cost of grief. It is deeply, incredibly empathetic, and I would not be surprised to see it adapted into an HBO-style prestige movie or show at some point, because it really is just exquisitely done. This may not be a summer beach read, but it is for sure worth your time.