All Fall Down by Ally Carter

Pages: 310
Intended Audience: Teens, mature tweens.
Genre: Mystery / Adventure
Notes for Parents: There is no coarse language or sexual content. Violence is minimal.

The Inside Cover

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 believers 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 keep 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.

What the cover doesn’t tell you:

With her father and brother being active soldiers, and her mother dead, Grace is sent to live with her grandfather, the US Ambassador to the country of Adria. She rekindles old friendships from when she used to visit as a child, and makes a few new ones, but she remains obsessed with the fact that her mother was murdered and no one will believe it was anything more than an accident. This is the first book in the series.

What’s good?

Excellent supporting characters and an intriguing setting make this mystery adventure a quick and easy read.
Politics and diplomacy add interest without complicating the plot. The main character, Grace, is likeable and imperfect; she’s impulsive, jumps easily to wrong conclusions, and is preoccupied with a truth she can’t quite grasp. Her relationships with new friend Noah and old friend Megan feel authentic. There’s plenty of humor and wit, a fair bit of action and adventure, and some harmless bad behavior.
Best Part: No romance. Such a relief!

What isn’t good?

The first half was slow. It picks up in the second half, but the action isn’t consistent. There’s not a lot of character development, but this may be coming in subsequent books in the series. I liked Alexei, but he didn’t seem to have a purpose. I presume his intensions come later in the series as well. The revelation that comes at the end was predictable and disappointing.
Worst part: The end.

Recommendation þþþoo

This was mildly entertaining. I really wanted to like it, but it never really held my interest. I loved the friendships, but didn’t really care for the story, especially how it ended—it should have been a shocker, but was just…”Ya, that figures.” Recommended for fans of the author.

Carter, Ally. All Fall Down. New York: Scholastic, 2015. (Hardcover)