7.4 /10 1 Votes
4.2/5 Barnes & Noble Originally published 2015 | 3.8/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All Fall Down (2015) is a young adult novel by teen-fiction author Ally Carter. It is the first book in the Embassy Row series set in and around the diplomatic quarter of a Mediterranean capital city. The second book of the series, See How They Run, is due out in December 2015.
Contents
Synopsis
Grace Blakely is absolutely certain of three things:
1. She is not crazy.
2. Her mother was murdered.
3. Someday she is going to find the killer and make him pay.
As certain as Grace is about these facts, nobody else believes her - so there's no one she can completely trust. Not her grandfather, a powerful ambassador. Not her new friends, who all live on Embassy Row. Not Alexei, the Russian boy next door, who is keeping his eye on Grace for reasons she neither likes nor understands.
Everybody wants Grace to put on a pretty dress and a pretty smile, blocking out all her unpretty thoughts. But they can't control Grace - no more than Grace can control what she knows or what she needs to do. Her past has come back to hunt her…and if she doesn't stop it, Grace isn't the only one who will get hurt. Because on Embassy Row, the countries of the world stand like dominoes, and one wrong move can make them all fall down.
Plot
The novel follows the story of 16-year-old Grace Blakely, who remembers her mother being murdered, although everyone else believes that she was killed in an accidental fire. After three years of panic attacks and fear, Grace is sent to live with her grandfather, the American ambassador, to Adria. There she begins to believe she sees the man who killed her mother. No one believes her except her best friends, Noah and Alexei.
Reception
Common Sense Media in reviewing All Fall Down wrote "This may not be high literature, but tweens and teens may get hooked on the series." A review by the Ottawa Public Library gave the book 4 out of 5 stars. and AudioFile called an audiobook version "A twisty listen sure to engage teen listeners."