Soft DNF at 25%.

Thank you to Solaris for my review copy.

I expected the book to have a faster pace than what I read. I think from the blurb that I thought it was going to be faster paced, dealing with the aftermath of a society that was so used to technology suddenly not being able to access it, and what I read wasn't that.

May come back to read this in the future now I know more about what to expect.

We Are All Ghosts in This Forest by Lorraine Wilson is a beautifully haunting and atmospheric tale that lingers in your mind long after you’ve finished it. Set against the backdrop of a dark and mysterious forest, the story weaves together themes of loss, identity, and the power of memory in a way that feels both intimate and universal.

Wilson’s prose is lyrical and evocative, painting vivid images of the forest that almost feels like a character in its own right. The intertwining stories of the characters are deeply emotional, and the supernatural elements add an eerie, dreamlike quality that keeps you hooked.

While the pacing occasionally felt uneven, with some sections moving slower than others, the rich atmosphere and emotional depth more than made up for it. We Are All Ghosts in This Forest is a compelling read that will appeal to anyone who loves thoughtful, atmospheric storytelling. A solid 4 stars!

An incredibly cool concept that unfortunately didn't follow through in the rest of the book. dnf at 32%

We Are All Ghosts In The Forest is a weirdly folkloric, tenderly poetic, multi-layered masterpiece of post-apocalyptic fiction. Lorraine Wilson has composed a modern masterwork that is as powerful in its gentleness as its wildness. She has tamed a peculiar kind of magic and imbued these pages with it.

The story takes place following an event where the internet has moved beyond the digital realm and entered our physical world — where ghosts of memes, recipe sites, Facebook profiles, and cat videos haunt the world as spectres that can possess people, cause sickness, and even bring about death. That’s the setting. It’s mystical, but absolutely clear and easy to picture, providing a wonderful playground to approach themes that stab at the heart of our relationship with the natural and digital world.

The way these ghosts latch onto nature is fascinating, creating hazards in woodland and untrodden paths, and this uncanny synchronicity between nature and technology is richly explored. There’s conflict and truth to be found in our dependence upon things greater than ourselves. For instance, Katerina is the main character who we find navigating this world, mixing herbs and tinctures to ward off digital ghosts. She talks to bees for guidance and seeks answers from fragments of the spectral internet — the equivalent of a Google search here takes the form of beseeching a ghost and interpreting cryptic answers. Is technology taking us over? Is it a sickness to our humanity? Is there a safe way to use it? There’s a huge amount of speculation here, but it doesn’t read like sci-fi or fantasy or anything in between. It’s literary folklore that resonates with modernity, and it’s absolutely breathtaking.

So now we’ve got the setting, let’s talk about the plot. It’s an outstanding example of a simple idea that’s done so well, it captures all sorts of nuance in the way it unfolds. The story follows a woman (Katerina) who finds a child to protect (Stefan). Reluctantly, she’ll be pushed to search for the boy’s father, who may have succumbed to a new form of disease caused by exposure to digital ghosts. Sounds straightforward enough, doesn’t it? But this is so much more than a search and rescue. The idea of otherness is expertly interwoven through the narrative. The way it feels to be an outsider — belonging, but never truly belonging — is expressed so well, it feels tangibly real. Katerina — who casts tinctures to ward off digital maladies — is a woman who’s accepted for what she can provide, but shunned for what she is. She’s not one of the locals in her village. She’s an interloper who straddles the line between being welcome and unwelcome. The way Lorraine Wilson brought a similar perspective to life in Mother Sea, her previous novel, was enchanting, but this isn’t a carbon copy repeat of the bubbling springs her readers have already swum. This takes us into fresh water, with greater depth and weightier resonance. There’s an assurance, confidence, and fearlessness about the writing here, and it’s spellbinding to behold.

Another familiar feature of Raine’s work is the slow simmer of a found family dynamic. This Is Our Undoing took us on a slow burn with a female protagonist who develops a closeness to a young, troubled boy. We see that play out here too, but this isn’t an attempt to replay the hits. There’s something unique and gratifying about the bond between Katerina and her new ward, as well as the journey they take together. The boy may be mute, but their progression towards accepting each other speaks volumes.

Oh, and just in case you weren’t convinced that this book is incredible, it also has a ghost cat as a pet sidekick, which is the dream feline for anyone with an allergy! I dare you not to fall in love with the cat. Seriously. You’re going to want one.

Ultimately, this is a novel that will appeal to fans of Lorraine Wilson. But it’s so much more elegantly crafted than anything she’s released before. This is a levelling up — an elevation that is guaranteed to satisfy existing fans and mesmerise anyone who hasn’t yet discovered this amazing author.

Quick disclaimer: don’t go into this book expecting explosions every few seconds or a barrage of pew pew pews or a litany of jump-scares. It’s ponderously, deliberately paced to allow you sufficient room to absorb the weight of every new detail. To say it is slow is to do it a disservice. To say it doesn’t get your pulse pounding isn’t quite right either. But be patient with the story, immerse yourself in it, and you’ll experience something that lasts a lot longer than a quick-fire thrill — something unforgettable.

We Are All Ghosts In The Forest is speculation for the heart. In the hands of someone else, this could so easily have been cerebral sci-fi, or fantasy horror, or it could have slotted into a much more clearly defined subgenre. Instead, this is a book that I’ve found impossible to quantify — it’s a human story about what it means to be connected to something else, be it a person, the natural world, or a digital one. It transcends convention to provide a unique experience that’s every bit as haunting as you hope it will be. It’s a song. It’s a poem. It’s a truth. It’s a life. It’s a myth. It’s a must. It’s amazing. A signature piece from a singular talent.

Lorraine Wilson has not just written a book, she’s produced a landmark of folkloric speculative fiction, provided an utterly captivating take on the post-apocalypse that redefines what sci-fi can be, and in doing so, she’s accomplished something remarkable. If this is a digital ghost, then it is quite welcome to possess my imagination. Listen to the bees, and they’ll speak of this story as honey for the soul. I suggest you sprinkle some salt to bring it near and welcome it onto your shelf as fast as you can.

And do try not to fall too head over heels in love with the cat while you’re at it.

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest introduces us to a post-apocalyptic/dystopian world where the Internet collapsed and left behind digital ghosts, haunting the landscape and infecting those who are not cautious around them (or just plain unlucky).

This was a beautifully written novel, and should really have grabbed me — I am a huge fan of Emily St John Mandel’s speculative literary fiction, and We Are All Ghosts in the Forest has echoes of that. However, I did struggle with this, mainly due to the setting and world-building. The story is set in Estonia, but that’s it — all the characters’ behaviours, names, culture, and beliefs are a mix of generic Eastern European types. This was disappointing because if this had done well, I would have enjoyed this a lot more. The gorgeous prose, the magic, the resonance with the land, the digital ghosts — all right up my street, but sadly, as a whole, this didn’t work for me.

I received an e-ARC from the publisher, Solaris, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The internet dies and comes back to life, and you can’t google to find out why.

This is a quiet, thoughtful, delicate tale about humanity, kindness, connection; one that slowly - very slowly - unwraps ideas about what it means to be alive in an evocative way. It might seem like a general dystopia in a land of plague and societal collapse but the story really is about self discovery and acceptance that happens to occur just after the end of the world.

I adored the small details the author used to create such a magically immersive setting — just a few pages in I loved the fancy, expensive briefcase from before now used to hold carrots. The juxtaposition of strange digital ghosts and remnants of civilisation to the comfort of a living room with a dozing cat. It also made a bold and jarring statement about the futility of racism, sexism and judgement when you think about how fragile and magical life can be.

A refreshingly unique folk-esque apocalypse with enchanting storytelling, poetic prose, undeniable characters and hauntingly relevant commentary about the need for togetherness and kinship.

The trick with high-concept novels is to make them work even if the reader can't quite grasp the concept. That usually means making the human story at the heart of it accessible and relatable. I'm pretty good with far-out concepts, but I found the central imagery in "We Are All Ghosts In The Forest" difficult to picture. It didn't matter because the central story, of a woman caring for a teenager who had been foisted on her due to some minor kindness in the past, in a post-apocalyptic world, worked perfectly. Her struggle to keep him safe, and deal with superstitious neighbours was extremely relatable and if it weren't for the post-internet apocalypse it had a very understandable analog with, say, an independent, learned woman moving in on her own to a rural community in the mid-0nineteenth century.

Katerina is the woman, an ex-photojournalist who has returned to her empty parents' house now the fall has happened. Stephan is the mute teen she is left with, and useful for exposition as she explains the digital ghosts and infections around us. This is what I found tough, the apocalypse here is the fall of technology with memes, and digital imagery escaping into the world: stories infecting people until they drain their life force, and wolves becoming more of the predator of myth as they soak up the concept of wolfdom. These digital ghosts can kill, and Katerina is a herbalist and just a little more savvy at dealing with them, so some people think she is a witch. As mentioned above, it took me a long time to understand what Wilson was getting at with her disaster, and I am still not sure I have completely. However, once Katerina starts to intuit ways of curing infected people, some of my bigger conceptual issues faded away. At its heart though it is a story about someone who has closed themselves off from connection finally building a relationship, forgiving themselves for their past, and looking forward to a more hopeful future.

It's an odd sensation enjoying a book I didn't quite understand, but a good one. There's clearly a pandemic metaphor at the heart of it (like a lot of books post-2020), albeit one that flips the script of that experience, here the only connection is face-to-face because technology no longer exists. The slipperiness of the apocalypse however did give the book more magic, which its Estonian/Russian border setting also encouraged (the kind of dense European massive forest is the key metaphor after all). A solid reminder that fantasy or science fiction should always be about the people first.

Fantasy and the future are not automatically linked in many people’s minds. While you can argue science fiction is a spin-off genre of fantasy for most people we tend to think the future is for technology (or sometimes the end of it) but rarely do we think of actual magic being in it (insert Clarke Advanced technology quote to explain the odd Star Trek/Doctor Who diversion from that – but we are not discussing that today!) . We can accept the past to be magical where all the myth and folklore is true; we can imagine magic still hiding within our own world in so many contemporary and urban fantasies but few books go past the present day. TL Huchu uses it intriguingly in their excellent Edinburgh Nights series but even that imagines a secret history for our world and now in Lorraine Wilson’s entrancing We Are All Ghosts in the Forest creates a fascinating new future world mixing echoes of the past with a post- apocalyptic future and yet delivers a key message about human kindness. It is also cements Wilson as a excellent storyteller as this is just a pleasure to read.

In the future the internet escaped and broke up into our world. As well as the end of computers, mobiles and digital technology it also created the ‘ghosts’ fragments of the digital world appearing to us as real fragments be they people, images or even stories whispered on the wind. Disturbing, sometimes beautiful and on occasion also able to infect humans with some form of connection sending them mad. Now the world is quieter, bigger and more dangerous.

In what used to be Estonia and near Tallinn Katerina has settled in her grandmother’s house and changed from being an acclaimed photographer to the village’s herbalist (and some would say hedge-witch) she wanders for trade. On her last outing she finds a strange mute teenager named Stefan whose father has written a note telling her he asked Stefan to find her and look after him. She has no idea who either is. Stefan’s arrival is poorly timed though as rumours of a new digital ghost disease running rampant. Suspicions and visions in the village raise their head and Katerina is once again seen as an outsider. Katerina wants to hunker down but all the signs point towards she needs to find Stefan’s father but the wider world and the nearby growing forests are filled with dangers.

There is a brilliant dissonance to reading this story. We have the collapse of our world, a regression to a much lower technology based society where even going the next village is now a long and perilous journey. Memories of what is today’s world are fading and yet while the science fiction reader in me is expecting explanations and resolutions to how the Internet broke up and became these digital ghosts Wilson talks about this as background and as a threat but often without any real explanation. Instead what we have here is more a future folk tale - this is a world magic has come back to and as history shows us that itself created waves of suspicion and distrust.

Katerina has become the herbalist of the area. She has tonics for pain relief, anxiety and many more things that she grades every day in but she also has some other inherited gifts. She can scary into water, she can see the messages of the bees and she can commune with ghosts. Wilson uses the first quarter of the book to just paint this world and as Stefan is a newcomer we get to explore the this little society in miniature. Wilson is painting little scenes of characters, local myths, herb lore and magic and this is the foundation for the rest of the story. It’s fascinating as it’s not quite the dystopia we are used to but at the same time life here is fragile doing well but has weak points, it won’t take too much to unsettle the balance.

In terms of immediate stakes this is a story again where saving the world and restoring modern life back is not the plot. It’s a middle aged woman deciding to help a teenager find his father albeit in a world where there is magic and ghosts. Place this a few hundred years ago and this would easily be a historical fantasy but with motorbikes running on ethanol, broken up concrete roads and the digital ghosts it’s a gorgeous fusion of genres creating something new. Katerina is drawn towards the massive forest where she sees signs via her powers that the father is and here Wilson paints the forest as something alive, something that pulls ghosts to it and there is a fascinating idea of wolves being infected with all the legends and stories of wolves we have so they become sorting more sentient and in many ways more dangerous. One of the most classic dangers of folklore and here they really put the reader on guard. This isn’t a child’s fairy tale it’s an adult one where we are finding the world is more weirder, magical and dangerous than we are used to.

Wilson has in all their books to date been accomplished as using nature and also the science behind it to create a powerful background but also importantly character in itself to each story. This tale is no exception and I loved the fusion of the old world with the new. Witches using bees is old folklore and one all Pratchett fans will be aware of but here as an example Wilson imagines seeing the world though bee’s eyes. How they could possibly predict the future and a recurring motif locally described as a ‘gold-neutrino-F Sharp waveform’ again and again heralds some form of prophecy and connection for Katerina to follow. As we get into the latter half of the book this new digital ghost disease is shown to be something new, dark and dangerous and exactly how in the world can you treat it?

If that was all there was to the story this would be just a very good poetical and enjoyable quest tale but Wilson actually is exploring a bigger theme. Being human, being part of society and doing the right thing - the power of being kind and the dangers of not. Katerina is an outsider as the witch but we also start to notice that she is the only woman of colour in the village and although her family has lived her for generations once again this is seen as making her different. With Stefan being non-verbal it’s very noticeable how the villagers are turning hostile especially as the rumours of a new disease grow. Katerina wants to keep her head down and the urge to help Stefan and not rock the boat is a powerful competing start to the story.

As that progresses though we see exactly how paranoia and suspicion of outsiders grows and grows. It’s noticeable how the story highlights people having to hide their differences be that being gay or neurodiverse which it is noted being white helps too. When people are in trouble rather than help it’s a lot easier to light the torches and pick up the pitchforks and Wilson really makes that danger come alive in multiple points in the story. The question the book asks is though - do you just continue to not act or do you still do what you think is right. Katerina has to put everything she had fought to get on the line and the world kicks her in the teeth. Do you stop or not? It’s a really powerful story and one that she has to do again and again even not always winning. Wilson doesn’t give this a diary tale ending of sugary goodness but it’s a hopeful and optimistic tale that if you can carry on while there are going to be moments of sadness then you can still do some good in the world. Are the ghosts the digital images or all the lost living souls haunted by their pasts in need of some courage as they can’t simply make ephemeral connections via the social media of choice? It’s perhaps not surprising that when images of the past arrive we see protests, images of the Grenfell tower and more showings that our current world is often equally guilty of casual indifference and bias.

There is a wonderful feeling of newness in this story and Wilson has for me created something really new. The use of language is subtle poetry, the exploration of human nature is thought provoking and a world is given a sense of magic both to create wonder and fear. We Are All Ghosts In The Forest is a perfect book to read while the world gets colder and darker to give us a reminder the light can still get in. It also for me shows Wilson is definitely now one of the most exciting U.K. writers around who excels in blending genres and themes to create brilliant tales. Yes I think I can very strongly recommend this!

I completely forgot to leave my review for this, so sorry!

I really enjoyed this unique tale that takes place in a post apocalyptic/ dystopian world! I thought the world building was intriguing and the characters were well written!

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is an amazing science-fantasy novel written by Lorraine Wilson, published by Solaris Books. A poignant story that refuses to hold the reader's hand, full of human element, and that throws us into a post-collapse world, which has some reminiscence of the COVID pandemic, and that takes you into an emotional journey, examining trauma, humanity and healing.

After the internet collapsed and leave its digital ghosts behind, Katerina moved to the safety of a rural village at the edge of the forest, living a solitary life helping her neighbours with her herbal remedies and beekeping; however, she was always deemed as an outsider for the others, tolerated but an outsider. But when she comes back to the village with a wordless child (Stefan), and their arrival is matched with rumours of bad harvest and a rampant disease, they are forced to escape to the forest in the search of Stefan's father, who might also have an answer to the new disease that is spreading.

Katerina's journey in this novel is not only a physical one, but also an interior one: if the world is plagued with ghosts, she harbours her own ghosts inside, and learning to trust in others will be needed to succeed. She's compassionate, and her own acts show the kindness, but fundamentally, she's a broken person; the journey with Stefan is what can heal her.
We can see the rest of the world as wary of strangers after the collapse; it's a hard world where people have gone back to the rural work, and their little stability is threatened by the digital ghosts and that new disease they don't know enough about (you can see the parallel with certain pandemic). Outsiders are never accepted in those small communities.

This is a story set in a collapsed world, not about the collapse. The world building is excellent, all painted through the marvelous Wilson's prose, which doesn't hold your hand, but which allows you to get a full image of this post-internet world. The pacing is relatively slow, which pairs excellently with the deepness of the plot.

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is a highly atmospheric proposal, a great science fantasy that you will enjoy if highly affecting stories are your motto; an excellent novel that further proofs Lorraine Wilson's ability to craft amazing stories around humanity.

A really interesting concept which just unfortunately falls short. The most intriguing concepts of the book are never fully explored, and while the book is more character-driven, there are many elements of the characters' relationships that I felt didn't make sense. I think the book should have been marketed differently.

I am very found of dystopia and always look for new titlr and this one was a delight to read. The concept and the writing drawn me in from the first lines and I enjoyed every surprises I find reading this book. I haven't read any reviews before reading this so I didn't knew what except and I don't regret it at all!

I love a good fantasy/scifi premise, the weirder the better. In China Mieville's The Last Days of New Paris artworks stalked the streets. Lorrain Wilson's We Are All Ghosts in the Forest goes for this. It is set in Eastern Europe in a post apocalyptic world in which the internet has broken out of its box. Avatars from the internet float as ghosts in the landscape, but also with the capacity to infect people. It is a premise that makes very little sense and does not really work. The story starts with a mystery - a strange mute boy left in the care of the main character Katerina who can interact with the internet ghosts and has some powers of divination. She purports to be a loner but actually has a network of people who she looks after. The focus is on these characters and their relationships, but none of this is enough to overcome the premise which is some weird mix of science and fantasy that never really works.

Throwing the reader into an environment that has been decimated by the collapse of the digital world, We Are All Ghosts in the Forest tells the story of Katerina, who once a photographer, has moved into her grandmother’s old house following the plague that has changed her world forever. Now she spends her time talking to bees, cultivating her crops and being the local cunning woman.

Lorraine Wilson’s We Are All Ghosts in the Forest refuses to hold the reader’s hand and immediately plunges the reader into a world that has been decimated and lives in fear of digital ghosts and electronic infection.

Set in Estonia, the story harks back to the paranoia of the Covid pandemic and how we all feared the spread of a disease that rampaged across the world, the setting that Wilson sets her naturalistic tale in is one that has reverted back to a pre - modern world before the age of technology.

Gone is the stream of information that once inhabited our consciousness, with the internet now being something malignant and malevolent, spewing forth images, stories or songs that terrorise the inhabitants.

Slowly building the story, Wilson paints a vivid picture of a world that is now dark and foreboding. Nature has become something else and is a very vivid part of the story, interlacing and interweaving with the narrative at every juncture. Katerina, our hero regularly talks to bees to get information, and everything she does is governed by the natural world. And whilst there is the whimsical elements of nature, there are also the dark, fearful parts that haunt our dreams. Forests have returned to being dark and dangerous, and are living creatures that have incorporated the storybook darkness of fairy tales. Wolves lurk in the dark waiting to eat the unwary and the weather governs lives.

With her languid prose, Wilson creates a mesmerising tale of acceptance and kindness, as Katerina fights against prejudice at every turn. First for bringing a stranger into town in the form of a silent young boy who has mysteriously been told to seek out Katerina at a local market by his father who she has no memory of ever meeting. Secondly, for the colour of her skin, and finally for being conceived as something of a witch for abilities to cure with herbal remedies and her closeness to nature.

With her sumptuous prose, Wilson tells a tale that whilst dystopian, is in fact very prescient to the world in which we live now, where acceptance and kindness are in short supply and the world has become one of prejudice and fear.

As a lover of dystopian novels and cosy, witchy vibes, this was always going to be a winner for me.

Having said that, this is quite a niche read and I can appreciate that it could be too slow for some readers or for those who aren’t in the right head-space.

I found the premise unique and, not lonely this, the approach to the world-building quite different. You have to patiently wait to be drip-fed information about how the world changed and the trauma of Khaterina’s background. In the meantime, there are lovely moments of herbal potion creations, ghost animals and communicating with bees.

There are moments of jeopardy, mostly because of humans and not the internet ghosts and there’s a lovely theme of found family.

As others have said, what some disliked about this book was what i enjoyed - this is a slowburn, and you need to be happy to meander along with it, gradually gaining understanding of the events and characters. I was very happy to do so, and was rewarded. There's a poertry here if you're willing to embrace the uncertainty.

I DNFed this at 20% and wasn't sure whether to post a review, but then decided it could still be helpful, so here goes.

This book felt like a dreary climate post-apocalyptic novel with literary pretensions #447, with very little to distinguish itself in a very crowded genre (think The New Wilderness or Salt Lick on the more readable end of the spectrum). The central premise of 'digital ghosts' sounded interesting in theory, especially since the creepy lore of the world wide web is such a rich contemporary horror arena. However, Wilson did not explore that route at all (at least not in the first 60 or so pages I read), making the 'ghosts' a lot more corny and cringe without the sort of Hendrix-like camp that could have made the premise entertaining.

Similarly to something like The Road, this is a boring attempt at a genre book masquerading as literary fiction. At least The Road had a masterfully created sense of dread, whereas the only dread I felt here was the need to go back to it for the review. Nothing happened in the first 20%, literally all they were doing was peeling some potatoes, and I bet even Han Kang can't make peeling potatoes for 60 pages engaging.

What pushed me over the edge is one of my absolute triggers - an author from outside a culture setting a novel there for the 'exotic' location without paying any heed to the cultural, political and social specifics of the location. This is nominally set in Estonia, but in some sort of a post-ethnic Baltic-ness, all the characters have a mix of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and generically-sounding Eastern and Central European names. Estonia, as well as the other Baltic states, was subjugated and occupied by Russia for centuries, and the specifics of inter-cultural relations are complex and nuanced, with very direct real-world implications in a Europe where a country is literally fighting for its identity to NOT be Russian. Imagining a post-Russian Baltic in 2024 without making any sort of comment on it or engaging with the context meaningfully is lazy at best, and intentionally harmful at worst. Obliterating the context of that reeks of something akin to a white author writing a 'post-racial' Caribbean, for example (see this excellent essay by Akilah White on the topic https://www.rebelwomenlit.com/literary-magazine/daylight-denied-discussion-essay-on-race-in-daylight-come). Maybe it picks up later in the narrative, but the first 20% did not sound promising.

This book comes with a truly fascinating premise and melding of eco/techno dystopia and fantasy, with a story that just about does it justice!

Set in Estonia - already unusual - we follow Katerina, acerbic yet caring, as she finds herself suddenly burdened with a foreboding mystery, while storm-clouds of disease, famine, and xenophobia gather on the horizon.

There's no info-dumping in this book; information about how the world came to be in its present state, and how it all works, are drip-fed. A little too slowly for my liking, but it was intriguing enough to keep me hungry for more. Fusing magic and technology is always fun, and 'We Are All Ghosts in the Forest' is truly and freshly original in its choices.

Other key characters (excepting Stefan) emerge from the pages as distinct and real, and there was a true feeling of "community" in the story - which made the unfolding events hit even harder, emotionally.

I found the book just a little too long for my liking - the pacing and narrative could've been tighter - but the world-building and characters were more than enough to keep me bobbing along.

We are all ghosts in the forest is a wonderful multi-layered story which caught my interest from the first few pages.

Lorraine Wilson has a fantastic way with words that capture an eery and atmospheric scene in words that are quite magical. The way she lets information wander through and between the lines made me fall in love really fast. Only some small parts weren't for me or made little disconnections from the way of telling things.

After they found the dad I had some problems with the change of pace because it felt simultaneously slow and fast at the same time. But it caught itself and continued to be fascinating.

Fascinating is especially how Lorraine Wilson was able to connect little magics with the residue of our digital age and created a world where threats are real and I always had the feeling of "Wow, that is the world I would live in 100 years". I really loved this feeling and enjoyed reading this book very much.

I will definitely check out more books by this author so thank you for the chance of reading this gem!

This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. We Are All Ghosts in the Forest will be released on November 7, 2024.

I had never heard of Lorraine Wilson before seeing We Are All Ghosts in the Forest pop up on NetGalley, but the premise of digital ghosts sounded fresh and intriguing, and an herbalist trying to live out a quiet and peaceful life in a world that won’t let her was promising enough for me to check it out. 

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest stars Katerina, a biracial photographer who moved to her grandmother’s home in Estonia after the digital world collapsed into often-dangerous electronic ghosts. Her new life as an herbalist with a pinch of magic does plenty to help keep herself and others in her town alive and safe, but she’s never truly gained the trust of a small town that views her as an outsider, and when a mute boy approaches her with a letter from his father demanding her help, the stability of her quiet life becomes harder and harder to maintain. 

It’s clear from the beginning that there is a big, life-and-death plot on the horizon. There are dreams and portents and rumors aplenty. But even so, the first half of the novel is a fairly quiet one, with an herbalist going about her life making tinctures and remedies, caring for a scarred child on her doorstep, and dealing with a prejudiced and mistrustful town. This is an obscure comparison, and the books are written for very different audiences, but there were times in the first half where it reminded me of Wise Child, which I read this spring for the Druids square on last year’s Bingo board. For all the apocalyptic paranormal happenings, the first half of the story feels tender and grounded in a way that really drew me in despite the action itself developing slowly. 

Unfortunately, as that action developed, my connection to the characters and their concerns began to unravel. It’s not that I stopped hoping for their success—after all, saving the world is very easy to cheer for—as much as I began to feel more and more distant from the story. Part of this is likely down to taste. I am repeatedly on the record about disliking thriller plots, and the third quarter of this story reads a little bit like a frantic, extended chase scene, with dangers around every turn and a never-ending supply of magical devices at hand to turn them aside. The magical devices are well-established by the slower build in the story’s first half, but the changes to the pacing and the shift in focus to the specific ways in which the magics work both made the story feel less personal and more formulaic, even if they were well-supported by the novel to that point. 

The final quarter of the novel combines the overarching threat and the small town interpersonal plot in a way that brings the story to a satisfying close, but so much hinges on whether the lead can put together the proper mix of herbs and magic that it still feels less grounded that what came before, even when returning to the interpersonal elements of the story. The story elements mix in a way that makes sense, but the resolution occupies an awkward in-between space between different types of fantasy stories—the magic doesn’t feel systematic enough to satisfy those who love novel uses of magic to defeat hard problems, whereas the resolution relies too heavily on quick-thinking application of magic to satisfy someone like me who is looking for a more grounded, interpersonal tale. 

Ultimately, We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is an engaging read that is at its best when dealing with small town prejudice and the almost slice-of-life tale of an herbalist navigating a paranormal apocalypse. But the fast-paced save-the-world plot is a bit too neat and streamlined for my tastes, and there’s probably too much slice-of-life for readers looking for a magical thriller. It’s still a good read, but one that occupies an in-between space without an obvious major audience. The writing quality, the themes, and the carefully crafted setting will surely make this a favorite for someone, but it will need to be someone who is comfortable with a story that can slide back and forth between slice-of-life and thriller elements. 

Recommended if you like: slow builds and fast finishes, magical herbalists navigating small-town prejudice.

Overall rating: 14 of Tar Vol's 20. Four stars on Goodreads.