Every Room Remembers by Tara Badstubner
How do you move forward after your life is wrecked to pieces? This is the only question left on SJ Manroe’s mind after the tragic death of her husband. Every Room Remembers is Tara Badstubner‘s debut metaphysical fiction novel.
Eight months after Wyatt’s death, 40-year-old interior designer Sara Jane (SJ) remains paralyzed by grief. She has isolated herself from everyone and clings to the only companion she can bear: Hawk, her late husband’s dog.
Luckily, things change when she gives a ride to Avery, a 25-year-old college student. SJ realizes that she actually enjoys Avery’s refreshing company, even her bluntness. So, she continues to give her rides. Their closeness allows SJ to open up about her grief, and she realizes that Avery has become a friend she never thought she needed.
With Avery’s encouragement, SJ travels from Sleepy Hollow, New York, to her hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina, to redesign an old house (Osprey House) that is under renovation. There, she also reconnects with her younger sister, Mae; her six-year-old niece, Jane; and Ben, a childhood friend who is now a handsome man. Returning home also means she must face painful memories of her parents’ deaths. Luckily, work and the relationships she rekindles slowly improve her mental and emotional state. Unfortunately, a devastating incident sends SJ spiraling back into the dark abyss she has been trapped in for months.
Meanwhile, Wyatt isn’t completely gone. His ghostly form helplessly watches as his wife struggles in her grief without his shoulder to lean on. Will Wyatt find a way to help SJ accept her new reality? If he does, will she listen?
Finding Hope in the Spaces Left Behind
Every Room Remembers is a heartfelt story about grief, love, friendship, and healing. I enjoyed Badstubner’s prose. Emotions (like grief) are portrayed through the ordinary: a pint of ice cream in a grocery store, a strawberry dipped in sour cream, names carved into wood, a wedding ring, or the scent of cologne on a pillow that isn’t quite there. Every detail — a fox visiting a bird feeder at sunrise or a stranded beetle pushing against a wall — asks you to look more closely, and I was happy to oblige.
I was impressed by how Badstubner creatively utilized the setting to deliver the book’s message. The Osprey House works as a metaphor for SJ: stripped down, structurally sound but scarred, and full of history that is just buried under layers of paint and neglect. Restoring it was a stand-in for the work of grief. SJ couldn’t simply tear out what’s damaged and start over; she had to work with what’s already there, uncover it carefully, and decide what’s worth preserving. The enigmatic windows and the names carved inside the closet reveal the lives that moved through the house and left their mark. It echoes the book’s main idea; nothing truly disappears. In restoring the house room by room, SJ was relearning how to inhabit her own life again.
The Healing Power of Unexpected Connections
The characters felt like real people. SJ is an unreliable narrator in the gentlest sense; she was so consumed by loss that sometimes she forgot about other people’s feelings. Wyatt wasn’t just her husband; he was also Mike’s best friend, Cole and Mae’s brother-in-law, and Jane’s uncle. Even Hawk, the dog SJ couldn’t bear to be apart from, sensed her constant sadness and drifted toward Jane, which SJ was slow to notice. It would be easy to find this frustrating in a narrator, but Badstubner portrayed it with such tenderness that SJ’s blind spots appeared relatable rather than unlikable.
The people around SJ also tried to pull her back into the world. Mae managed her with bossy protectiveness that sometimes overstepped SJ’s boundaries. Avery gave her a unique friendship that nudged her to take the first step toward living again. Even little Jane unintentionally taught a lesson or two. And then there’s Ms. Rose, the old lady with “astute owl eyes,” whose faintly magical introduction was no accident at all.
Every Room Remembers is proof that grief and hope can share the same space. Through SJ’s story, Badstubner reminds us that healing doesn’t mean forgetting what we have lost; it’s about learning to open our hearts to new connections and unexpected blessings life still has to offer.
About Tara Badstubner:
Tara Badstubner was a Writer-in-Residence at Craigardan (2022-2023) and is an alum of Bookgardan. She received a Continuing Studies Novel Writing Certificate from Stanford. More recently, she was an artist-in-residence of Hewnoaks where she worked on her upcoming second novel. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her daughters, husband, and dogs. This is her debut novel.
