The internet is dead, and its ghosts haunt us all.

When I picked this book up I was expecting a pacy adventure through an apocalyptic world. This novel is not that. It's something much, much better.

The internet is no more - it has broken out of containment and technology is no longer safe to use. Katerina lives in her Baba's house with her bees, goats, chickens and a ghost cat for company. She travels around trading herbs and medicines for necessities and on one of these trips picks up a mute teenage boy holding a note with her name on it.

Katerina is a fantastic character. She's clever and resourceful but guarded and reluctant to change her status quo. She is in tune with the land and her herbalism is just a little more than ordinary. Seeing her confront her own ghosts and open herself up to change throughout the book was a wonderful character arc to follow.

Themes of grief, love and acceptance are at the fore of the story. Katerina and the other characters have deep mental wounds, and only by learning to trust and accept each other can they begin to heal from them.

This novel is quiet and meandering. It doesn't rush and it doesn't hold your hand. You will have questions and they won't be answered directly, but I think that is one of the things that makes this book so excellent.

I was drawn to We Are All Ghosts in The Forest by the unique premise for a post apocalyptic novel and the haunting cover. The idea of a digital pandemic sounded fascinating and while the trope of adult and child finding their way in a new world has obviously been done before I still hoped for something original. This is a slower paced and more character driven story than I was expecting and I think that is why it did not fully resonate with me. There were several things I liked, like the setting in Eastern Europe which was highlighted by the descriptive writing style. I also liked the incorporation of an almost fantasy like thread of witchcraft and digital ghosts and it is clear that the author did her research about the medicinal uses of herbs. On the downside I wanted to know more about what happened before we met the characters, how the world ended up this way, and those questions were never really answered. The pacing of the book is definitely slower than I prefer , and so I found myself almost reluctantly plodding through it at times.
This is a book for those who like beautiful and descriptive writing, a slower pace and characters with an element of mystery, and I am sure there are many readers out there who will enjoy it more than I did.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

A very slow burner and as a consequence it took me a bit of time to get into it however it was well worth sticking with it. This is not my typical type of read but I did find it very enjoyable. The whole premise is extremely original and the characters are very well written. I can see why it was written during a global pandemic and the obvious links with the world are that time but to use the digital era and the loss of it in the way which they author has was highly thought provoking.

Well worth reading. I'd go with 3.5 stars however as I can't do that will round to as 3 is too low.

This is a slow burn for readers who enjoy character-driven, introspective storytelling. The first 20%-30% might seem disorientating, particularly if you are expecting a more action-packed dystopian narrative. This has an atmospheric, lyrical feel, a futuristic, inclusive folktale that is more about the experience of living in this post-apocalyptic world rather than explaining it. I enjoyed the descriptions of the witchy, earthy life that the main character lived with in the village, and how the slower pace and connection to the earth could be so beneficial. But the themes were what made me keep reading. The exploration of belonging is unique and is worth the patience that the pace and detailing demand. A really good blend of literary, folk, and sci-fi.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

What I loved about this book: The cat. The writing was stunning, atmospheric and haunting. I was totally captivated in the daily struggles faced by our main characters. Did I mention the cat? The self-sufficiency of our FMC, and compassion despite being faced with community rejection.

What you might love about this book: This is predominantly a character study, focusing on the emotions associated with trauma, grief and fear. Although there is an underlying plot the real focus is on the growth of our cast.

I was captivated every time I picked this book up and I can't wait to read more from this author in the future.

DNF at 62%
I'm sorry, but this book is not for me. The cover is beautiful, and the blurb is very promising. However, I have had trouble not only connecting with the story but also understanding it, there are too many unknowns.

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest by Lorraine Wilson offers a beautifully haunting portrayal of a world haunted by the remnants of a digital collapse. Katerina’s journey through lushly described landscapes and an atmosphere thick with melancholy is crafted with care, and her story explores themes of trust, survival, and confronting the past. Readers who enjoy introspective, atmospheric storytelling with a slower pace and lingering imagery will find much to appreciate here, while those who prefer more straightforward narratives may find it challenging.

This was a 'dnf' for me. I couldn't get into it.
I usually love post-apocalyptic books, but for something about this one didn't sit right with me.
I couldn't quite buy into the story and didn't find the characters that interesting.

In short: this is the perfect mix of (near-future) science-fiction, fantasy, and horror.

I was so enamored with the concept of this book and I could honestly see the real world going in the direction of where this books takes us. I found the climate fiction angle (maybe even eco-horror?) totally plausible.

The characterizations are stellar, providing you with fully fleshed-out main characters and side characters. Really, the character dynamics were some of the best I've read in a long while. I teared up during several interactions, which rarely happens to me.

The text itself can be dense at times, with a lot of interiority and description, but the pacing doesn't slow even during the denser portions where there's minimal dialogue to rely on. It works well, in my opinion.

Thematically, the story draws on otherness, found family, biological family, healing, and finding the power to forgive yourself even while others cannot or will not forgive you, which enhances both the plot and the characters, tying these things together.

I won't forget this story for a long, long time.

Ethereal, ominous and a heartbreaking story of something that is entirely in our scope. This was a brilliant read.

Beautifully descriptive, and evocatively haunting. Set in a region near Russia, after the collapse of the internet, the world is haunted by digital ghosts. Remnants of songs and film, even viral videos, linger and soon begin to infect people.
This is a story of fear and despair, friendship and found family and how the first two can destroy the second two. The author takes a very empathetic approach and it’s hard to find enemies even when there is everything to fear.
I absolutely loved this and am trying desperately not to tell too much about the story. The synopsis and the cover hooked me.

Sadly this was one of those books that, when I finished I thought 'well that was a waste of time'
The concept sounds really cool, maybe a little spooky.
The execution...it's so slow and very dull. There's the odd moment of excitement sprinkled in, but most of it is a whole lot of nothing.
The characters weren't particularly interesting or dynamic, meaning I had no attachment to them or what happened to them. I was mainly invested in the 'ghost' cat
I always hate to put books down, because I know authors put a lot of work and love into them, but this just wasnt for me, and i can't recommend it

What would you do if the Internet suddenly crashed? What would happen to society?

In this dystopian novel, the cause of the loss of the Internet remains unclear, but we join main character, Katerina, some years after. It is not just the lack of immediate information that people have to contend with, electrical memories of online content remain in the world as “ghosts”. On the whole, the ghosts seem passive and harmless, but many eye them with suspicion. Indeed, as with all good dystopian novels our real cause for concern comes from other people and, uniquely in this novel, we have another threat from forests and wild animals. They seem to have absorbed the dark, brooding stories written about them and have embodied those characteristics, becoming much like the malevolent forests and creatures in folk tales.

Katerina lives in a remote village where she has gained the reputation for being a healer through the use of herbs, and for understanding and repelling the ghosts which wander on the periphery of the village. Katerina prefers to be on the outskirts of society and quite happily lives alone with her ghost cat, until one day a strange, non-speaking boy arrives with a note from his father asking her to look after him. Faced with the decision to be the carer of this boy or to help him look for his father, Katerina’s mind is made up with the threat of flooding, a new plague, and a message from the bees.

I loved the world building of the novel. There were some truly unique and thought-provoking elements to the world. The integration of folklore and herbology was very enjoyable, as were the themes of otherness and belonging, self-forgiveness, and the importance of noticing the small things in life. Some elements of the book became a little repetitive, but in reality, this only added to the tangled, sticky cobweb atmosphere of the book. Overall, there is no denying that Lorraine Wilson is an excellent writer, with realistic and absorbing dialogue, beautiful descriptions of the weather and countryside, and some of the most unique concepts in dystopian fiction I have encountered for a long time.

Thank you to @netgalley and @solarisbooks for the ARC.

When a book is described as a post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi, I believe that there are certain expectations. We Are All Ghosts in the Forest DOES NOT adhere to these expectations AT ALL and yet, this story is incredible. For a relatively short novel, it is quite slow paced but don't let that deter you from the beautiful exploration of grief, kindness and love with a sci-fi twist that I can definitely see being our future. The writing is stunning and the gorgeously haunting cover hides so many little secrets that I adored discovering once I finished reading. A wonderful read for anyone looking for a different kind of post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

So what happened when the internet collapsed? The answer to this question cannot be found in this book. And that’s one point why this book is such a great read. It’s not ‘this happened and then that happened and now this and now the world is we know it is gone for good’. On the contrary. The story of Katerina, and why she’s living in the forest as a healer, unfolds slowly but starts with the strange event of her meeting a boy who doesn’t speak, but gives her a note in which she is begged to take care of him. And how can she refuse? After all, taking care of people is what she does now.
This slow but captivating story is wonderfully written and the atmosphere reminded me of stories by Katherine Ryan Howard, Diane Cook and even Diana Gabaldon. Told in broad strokes but with an absolute eye for detail, you can almost smell the forest, the trees and the animals. A lot is being said without using too many words; there are no ready-made solutions for what happened to the world so people have to adapt – which is harder for some than for others.
The kind of book you’ll want to read more than once.
Thanks to Solaris and Netgalley for this review copy.

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher
This book was very confusing since the first pages, we know we are in a dystopian world where the internet has crashed down and created some sort of ghosts from the blurb only and we actually never learned much more about what and how it happened. At first I was frustrated of not having more information, but it actually made sense since the characters didn't seem to know much more either. What mattered to them was how to keep on living in a new world.

The focus was, as I said, not on this new world but on the characters that live in it, mainly Katerina whose point of vue we follow. Through her eyes, we see a "new" society with the flaws of the past (of our present): racism, prone to discriminate and to ostracize those who don't fit their sense of security.

But there are so many people who are different, Katerina is a mixed race single woman who travels, makes remedies and talks to bees, Elisabet who is on the spectrum, a mute boy send by his sick father to someone he doesn't know, a gay father who tries to catch his dead partner's ghost... and people who succomb to a new infection.

Although I was at times lost in the narrative (I don't know if I misunderstood or if some words were missing), I enjoyed this contemplative book. I understood how Katerina was stuck in a place of culpability and responsability to everyone around her. I understood that it was hard in a world like this to properly deal with one's trauma, especially if people around you don't make you feel safe for something as ridiculous as one's skin colour. I thought the characters felt real, but the action was lacking something. But what I really didn't like was what the bond became. It was rushed and it didn't feel natural or coherent with the story.

I saw the author was a biologist and it shows in all the info we get about plants, this will surely please all the witchy girlies out there :) And there's a CAT!



Rep: mixed-race MC (the author is also mixed race but not the same origins), selective mute SC, autist SC, gay SC

TW : death, illness, virus, grief, racism, misogyny, witch hunt, verbal and physical violence

Review

This was a very pretty book that didn’t have enough substance for me.

I generally liked the way it was written. It was tonally consistent and the descriptions helped to build and flesh out the world around the main character and the way she saw things. I found the herbalism “magic system” and the setting very interesting: fleshed out enough that I felt like I understood the limitations but not so well-explained that it started to lose its mystery. I think in a book with a plot and characters I felt more connected to, the ghosts of the internet and hedge-witchery could have made a really impactful book.

Unfortunately, I felt like the plot, pacing and characters let down the interesting setting. The pacing was extremely slow, which I can deal with sometimes but it also felt repetitive and a little predictable. I never felt like the book was building towards anything I couldn’t already see, and I just wanted it to get on with things. This was exacerbated by the main character’s primary motivation being one of maintaining her quietly miserable status quo, and her primary emotional touchstone being shame. I don’t think that these are inherently bad traits in a character, but in Katerina did not feel to me like an effective protagonist. This was compounded when we found out her tragic backstory and the reasons for her guilt, and it really wasn’t that bad. It felt like the author wanted to write a character motivated by guilt but didn’t want to give her something actually bad to feel guilty about in case the readers didn’t like her, so chickened out.

Finally, I really don’t like books where fate, destiny, soulmates, etc are a thing that the characters have to interface with. And the connection between the MC and the mysterious man she dreams of felt far too close to lazy hand waving than anything i could take seriously. Especially when he has Saint-like patience with this woman who does little to deserve it.

Ultimately I don’t think I would recommend this book unless you love stories about weird loners learning to let people in and you like a witch, cosy atmosphere.

Thanks to NetGalley and Solaris for this ARC.

This book made me feel comforted and despondent at the same time. The apocalypse came and stripped away all pretentiousness from people, revealing the true ugliness of prejudice beneath.

The story starts in medias res, with Katerina, a former photojournalist living on her late grandmother's farm in Estonia, meeting a strange boy in a market in a world where the collapse of the internet has thrown society back a few hundred years, and dangerous digital remnants roam the lands. She takes Stefan in and teaches him the art of herbal medicine, all the while trying to find out what happened to his father and how they can stop a new mysterious type of digital sickness.

Throughout the book, I often felt that the science behind the digital ghosts, along with the apparent magic of sentient objects and forests, as well as talking to bees, blended together to create a mystical background that feels both outlandish and realistic at the same time.

The hazy details of the science and the cause of the apocalypse did not diminish the book's enjoyability. It deliberately shifted the focus to the human element, and there was plenty of that! The main character is still trying to process an old trauma, which is brought to the forefront of her mind by the awful way her community treats her. Being a recluse herbalist of Indian descent is apparently one odd thing too many for the average Baltic apocalypse survivor.

The strange connection between Katerina and Stefan's father is beautifully portrayed and provides a solid foundation for a hopeful ending.

I feel like I made a new friend in this book. Thank you!

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.

Lorraine Wilson’s We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is a beautifully haunting tale that brings to life a world where digital ghosts linger in the aftermath of a collapsed internet.

It took me a moment to ease into the slower rhythm of the story, which is deeply rooted in nature and the quiet moments of daily life. Yet, as I settled in, I became captivated by the layers of society and secrets that Wilson gradually reveals. The setting felt vivid and alive, with the forest almost becoming a character in its own right, filled with folklore, fear, and beauty.

This book is a slow burn, but it’s rich with emotional depth and atmosphere. It had me chuckling at the joy in adversity, wiping away a few tears, and getting goosebumps. If you’re looking for a story that will gently but deeply immerse you in its world, then this quiet post-apocalyptic novel is worth every page. It’s a story of resilience, trust, and the delicate interplay between the remnants of technology and the simplicity of human connection.