All Fall Down by Ally Carter Series: Embassy Row #1
Publisher: Scholastic (2015)
Audiobook
{8 hours and 33 minutes} (320 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Also by this author: See How They Run
Also in this series: See How They Run
Reading Challenges: Read 2015
Synopsis
This exciting new series from NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Ally Carter focuses on Grace, who can best be described as a daredevil, an Army brat, and a rebel. She is also the only granddaughter of perhaps the most powerful ambassador in the world, and Grace has spent every summer of her childhood running across the roofs of Embassy Row.
Now, at age sixteen, she’s come back to stay–in order to solve the mystery of her mother’s death. In the process, she uncovers an international conspiracy of unsettling proportions, and must choose her friends and watch her foes carefully if she and the world are to be saved.
Find the book: Goodreads
My Review
Grace is an extremely unreliable narrator. I knew that was going to be the case as soon as she started seeing vision of her dead mother. There is no doubt about it that Grace has something going on.
Grace arrives in Adria, a fictional country where all the embassies are in a row, to live with her grandfather who is the American ambassador to Adria. She doesn’t really want to be there and she doesn’t think anyone really wants her there.
Grace is first surprised by her brother’s best friend, Alexi, whom her brother has asked to look after her. Grace doesn’t think she needs anyone looking out for her. She resents Alexi for thinking he needs to watch over her. However, Alexi kind of does need to watch over Grace since her first day in Adria she assaults the Russian ambassador. It was an accident she insists.
Grace proceeds to get herself into trouble wherever she goes and whatever she does. Be that sneaking into foreign embassies hostile of the United States or showing up unannounced in places she shouldn’t be. Trouble just seems to follow Grace around. When she sees the man she believes murdered her mother, things get very interesting.
Noah has appointed himself Grace’s best friend. Grace, who never had a best friend, isn’t so sure what to make of Noah. He is an Israeli-Brazilian who has lived his entire life on Embassy Row. Sometimes he stays at the Israeli embassy with his mother and sometimes he stays at the Brazilian embassy with his father. I think he is really good for Grace. She needed someone in her life just willing to be her friend.
There are a few others on Embassy Row that Grace thinks she might be able to call friends. That is, they could be her friends if she doesn’t go totally crazy on them.
All Fall Down held my attention quite well. I kept wanting to know what really happened to Grace’s mother. I will say that I guessed it before the end of the book but I’m probably just a good guesser. The ending of the book leads right into another that I can’t wait to read.
Which Reading Challenges?
- You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
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