Guest Book Review: Serena Clarke - All Over The Place

Reviewed by Ceri Kehoe

Livi Callaway has fled back to London after a reality TV disaster in New Zealand. Safely anonymous in the big city, she’s determined to stay under the radar from now on. But her attempts to build a new life are complicated by unexpected visitors from her old one, and new dangers and temptations lie in wait.

Late one night, she meets a mysteriously sexy American on the Underground – and the events that follow take her from Pooh Bear to the golden lights of Paris, via a trail of rock stars dead and alive. A family in disarray, a determined Swede, a crazed Australian and a childhood friend (who might yet be more than that) have her all over the place as she tries to discover the American’s secret – while keeping her own.

With help – and occasional hindrance – from her friends, what she eventually finds is something unexpected...sometimes, running away can lead you to exactly what you didn’t know you needed.


Livi Callaway has left her home in New Zealand to return to her birth place England. She's getting away from the fact that her ex boyfriend has totally humiliated her by appearing on a dancing reality TV show. Will she ever be able to show her face again?

While in London she's on a packed tube train, chatting/flirting with an American man, in the rush to get off at his stop his bag gets tangled with hers and he gets off without it. She knows nothing about him, not even his name, only that he is from Idaho.

Her best friend and flatmate Cass convinces her to hunt him down, telling Livi that he could be the love of her life but will Livi agree?

At first glance of this book I thought it might be a bit Mills & Boon type judging by the cover. Thankfully it's nothing like that. I finished this book over 12 hours ago and have thought and thought about it but I still can't make my mind up about it.

While there was plenty going on in the story, a few twists to it, I didn't find it really engaging. I didn't really care what happened to the characters, I just kept on reading to find out what happened. A bit of the plot had no need to be there, like what happened with Livi's parents, that could have been filled with something else which would have made a lot of difference. There were plenty of different characters in the book which made it a bit more livelier.

Told in the third person narrative, there were a few emails between Livi and her old childhood friend Cam. I enjoyed those as it's a bit of a favourite format of mine when reading, anything a bit out of the norm! The author did write this well as it the story did flow.

Would I recommend All Over The Place? I would recommend it, purely because we all have different tastes. I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.