I received All The Places I’ve Ever Lived* by David Gaffney as an e-book from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.
I found this book… strange. But in a good way. It’s got mass murder, a ghost who isn’t really a ghost? time travel and some teen drama as well. When I described it like that, it doesn’t sound that great. Honestly? It worked really well. We follow Barry Dyer (although I kept reading it as Danny Dyer oops) after a local attack has taken place on a girl from his school in the 70’s. He is a ‘tether’ to the paranormal in this plot due to the metal discs on his body which only he can see.
At first I struggled to read this book, just because I didn’t know what I was going into. I’d completely forgotten the blurb, and I thought ‘eh I’ll just read it instead of googling it’. Some of the scenes were extremely surreal, and I still have a lot of questions. Maybe I didn’t read into the details enough but I still don’t know who the murderer is. In a mystery styled book, I normally want to find out a bit more about who the person is. We only really get an insight into Barry and his friends and family, the second story line, if I can call it that, doesn’t have much expansion on who people really are.
Another issue I had, which isn’t by any means a problem. It might not annoy anyone else, it could just be me. But once you notice something, and you realise it’s unnecessary it can get quite annoying. So Barry has a friend called Samantha Fry, and she seems great, yeah, good addition to the story as the coming of age aspect. What bugged me, was that whenever she was mentioned, it was always ‘Samantha Fry’ it was never just Samantha. I just don’t understand why the last name always had to be used.
Petal, the ghost in the story is explained about halfway through by a secondary character. I really liked this explanation because it brought the information needed to the question I, and Barry, had. I also really liked that the time travel didn’t enable them to talk to people and move things etc. Because this way was a reasonable way to make it work well.
I would recommend this book, for definite. The only problem’s I had were me just being picky about it. The name thing isn’t a big deal, and the knowing the killer isn’t actually important to the plot. I just personally would have changed it slightly. It’s still a great book though.
