A classic tale of a journey in several contexts. I won’t deny that I found the main male character difficult to like but I read this in the space of 4 days…..It grabbed me from the opening pages and as is not often the case for these kind of stories it ended well and by that I mean it ended in a “believable” and acceptable way.

Ali Shaw has written an extremely clever novel on how nature taken its revenge on humanity. You wake up one morning to find that trees literally have taken over the world, killing humans and destroying everything along the way. It is a great book about surviving not only the nature around us but our own dark nature. It is an compulsive page turner.

Even if just for the stunning cover alone, this book deserves recognition. So imaginative and beautifully written, this book echoes moments of John Wyndham's 'Day of the Triffids', depicting the power of nature. This is one of those books whose character's grip you, as you join them on a journey through a changing world. Illustrating the juxtaposition nature holds of beauty and violence, mirrored in the characters themselves, this book is one for those who like adventure and enjoy a little fear.

(I am a bookseller in Northampton and luckily got this book for a review-and I'm glad I did!) I thoroughly enjoyed this book for the imagery alone. In the first chapter I could almost smell the misty and dewy atmosphere. The unsettling air of change is set up brilliantly by an unrest in the animals surrounding Hannah and Adrien the main characters. Shaw describes a world in which nature has reclaimed every urban surface; relentless and dominating in its approach, the trees also take the lives of many people. This is a well paced book with plenty of beautiful and dark descriptions of nature. Although now I am more wary of nature's power when I take a walk through my local forest!!

I was drawn to this book first by the cover and then by the intriguing premise of the world turning into a forest over-night. It seemed to offer considerable potential and a story that was different to anything else I have read, and in that last respect, at least, it lived up to expectations. There I'm afraid the potential came to rest. There are books in which the writing and the pace seem pick you up and to whisk you along at a breath-taking rate; that can have you hanging onto the edge of your seat; where you have to exert an iron cast self-control not to glance at the pages ahead in your urgent need to find out what is going to happen. There are books that envelope you, enrapture you and have you reading so hard that you get a head ache. And you feel happy about it. This is not one of them. The book is divided into four parts and it is my sad duty to inform you that the first three and a half represent some of the stodgiest reading matter I have ever encountered. It was a wade through molasses. The characters fail to really lift off the page, whilst they are (mostly representative) of normal people we all know - as is the intention - and they are well formed and individual they just seem to lack any substance. They feel like detailed but two-dimensional pencil sketches rather than actual people. The story itself is interesting and largely unpredictable, which is what one hopes for but that is the very best that can be said for it. It drags out and crawls along until you finally reach the second section of Part IV, when things pick up somewhat only to lead to what feels - after the novelty of such an original plot - to a rather lame and anti-climactic conclusion. So to sum up: It's an OK read, I imagine some people with love it, but by and large I probably could have used my time better to re-read The Night watch for the fifteenth time.