WE ARE ALL GHOSTS IN THE FOREST
LORRAINE WILSON
*****
The internet is dead, and its ghosts haunt us all.
When the internet collapsed, it took the world with it, leaving its digital ghosts behind – and they are hungry. Former photojournalist Katerina fled the overrun cities to the relative safety of her grandmother’s village on the edge of a forest, where she lives a solitary life of herbal medicine and beekeeping.
When a wordless boy finds her in the marketplace with nothing but her name in his pocket, her curiosity won’t allow her to turn him away. But haunting his arrival are rumours of harvest failure and a rampant digital disease stirring up the ghosts, and the mood in the village starts to sour.
Accused of witchcraft, Katerina and Stefan escape into the forest, searching for his missing father and the truth behind the disease. If there is a cure, Katerina alone might find it, but first she must find the courage to trust others – because the ghosts that follow her aren’t just digital.
MY REVIEW
*****
The world has been changed - the internet is a thing of the past and people have turned to the simpler life to survive. However, the digital age still has its ghosts – remnants of the internet which haunt and infect the living. Can Katerina keep Stefan – a silent boy entrusted to her care, safe?
We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is a hard book to categorise, at first glance and from its blurb it seems like Horror and Sci-Fi, but it’s much more complex than that. It’s a story of letting people into your life, of grief and of loss and of found family. It’s beautifully written and the world-building is top-tier, I really felt invested in the story and empathised with Katerina completely.
The characters are all interesting and well defined – from Katerina who can commune with bees and is in step with nature, to silent Stefan and even the digital cat Orlando who became a favourite of mine. You even felt sorry for those in the village who mistrusted Katerina and embarked on a bit of a witchhunt - you understood they were just scared and didn’t understand what was happening to them.
The story occasionally felt a little repetitive in places, but I was still gripped throughout. There’s a lot that isn’t fully explained in terms of how the digital ghosts came to be, and there’s not much written about the event which caused ‘the end of the world as we know it’, but there’s so much more to the story that I didn’t really mind that these were skimmed over. I was invested in the survivors and their struggles.
Overall, We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is such an interesting premise and a heart-felt story about survival, which I highly recommend. Thank you to NetGalley & Solaris for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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