All Fall Down

Bibliography
Carter, Ally. All Fall Down: An Embassy Row Novel. Scholastic Press, 2015.

image from: www.goodreads.com

Plot Summary (From www.allycarter.com)

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 an 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 all stand like dominoes, and one wrong move can make them all fall down.

My Thoughts
Ally Carter was at the TLA 2015 Teen Day. This is how long I've had this book on my pile. This is how long it's been staring at me across my office to be read. This is how long others have read it and raved about Ally Carter.

Well, Ally was coming to NTTBF (North Texas Teen Book Festival), and I was determined to read one of her books before hearing her speak again. I almost got this one finished before the event.

I enjoyed it. The story has suspense and intrigue without gore. Grace's mother was murdered. Grace saw it happen (so she thinks). When she returns to the city of the crime, she just cannot shake that people are lying to her. She must find her mom's killer. I'm glad that Carter drops clues and red herrings into the story. I didn't figure it all out five chapters into the book. In fact, I didn't know how this book would end until it did.

Knowing there are already two other books in this series, I chuckled when I saw their titles embedded into this story. I wondered if that was Carter's intention (Did she already know the arc of the series?).

I liked the different characters from each embassy. I think I'm most like Ms. Chancellor (but I think there's MUCH more to her story than I realize from book 1). I will continue reading Grace's story, but before I do, I'm going to read S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders because Ally Carter talked about her and this book in 2015, and that's been on my pile, too.