WHAT I WOULD TELL YOU by LIZ TOLSMA

Punlication date 1/1/23

WHAT I WOULD TELL YOU by LIZ TOLSMA is a beautifully written dual timeline historical romance novel which takes place in Salonika from 1941 to 1943 during the German occupation of Greece, and in 2019 in Pittsburg and Thessaloniki (formerly Salonika). The author has obviously done a great deal of research into the horrors perpetrated towards the Greek Jews at that time, some of whom had already fled from persecution in Spain. This book is a must read for those of us who honour God’s chosen people.
It is a story of courage and sacrificial love, as we follow Mathilda Nissim and her beloved husband Asher’s experiiences  during WW11. Mathilda continues to write her newspaper in secret, encouraging the Jews to stand up and fight. their oppressors. Whilst it is horrific to think of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man during the Holocaust, the author reminds us that anti-Semitism is still very active in the world.
 I like to see how their friends Ioanna and Petrus do all they can to help Mathilda and Asher, at great risk to themselves, and how they share their food and faith with them. 
When Tessa Payson finds out through a genetic test  that she has Sephardic Jewish blood and that she and her cousin Riley are not related, she gets on a plane against her mother and stepfather’s wishes and flies to Thessaloniki to find out the truth about her ancestry and her faith.
I like the strong Christian message on which the book is based, and the way the author, through her characters, shows how Christians and Jews serve the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Tessa’s friend Giannis says to her when she has questions about which religion she needs to follow now, that she can be both a Christian and a Jew, like he is, and that Jesus the Messiah was also a Jew.
The two time lines run together well with Mathilda’s diary holding them together.
Family relationhips, particularly the special bond between a mother and her child, play a big part in the characters’ lives  Things are not as they seem and secrets are kept in order to not cause pain. Tessa’s search for the  truth about her heritage leads her on an exciting journey, but it is one her mother would rather she did not take. 
It is a story of hope and new beginnings, and one I cannot recommend highly enough.
I was given a free copy of the book by NetGalley from  Barbour Publishing. The opinions in this review are completely my own.