All Fall Down (Embassy Row #1) by Ally Carter by Ally Carter | Teen Ink

All Fall Down (Embassy Row #1) by Ally Carter by Ally Carter

February 16, 2016
By Teenage_Reads ELITE, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Teenage_Reads ELITE, Halifax, Nova Scotia
293 articles 0 photos 5 comments

Favorite Quote:
"So many books, so little time"


In every country around the world there is at least one embassy for another country. So when the United States has a deal with Iraq, or Canada visiting the United States, they have special houses they go to, and claim to be “their land”. These houses or embassies are very important to how countries work together. The leader of the embassy is the ambassador, someone who might live there during a trade, a few months, or permanently. The ambassador job is to make his/her country look good to the one they are currently in. A bonus would be not to get into a fight with any other ambassador, because that could lead to a war. In the kingdom of Adria, the embassy all line out outside of the city as one street, showing the peace between one countries to the next.

Grace Blakely spent almost every summer in Adria, as her grandfather was the US ambassador and lived there full time. Grace, her old brother Jamie, and her mother Caroline, spent each summer going to be beach, hanging out with friends, and being a loving trio of a family, as their father, Caroline husband, was in the military and was often on a mission, leaving Caroline to raise their two children. That was true until three years ago. Three years ago Grace was thirteen, living with her mother in their run down antique shop. They never stayed on one place for long, but this shop, her mother deemed, is where they were meant to stay. Until one night Grace came downstairs and saw her mother gunned down, with the killer setting fire to the shop. Grace was saved with only a few burns, where her mother died. Everyone told Grace it was an accident, but Grace knew what she saw. Her mother was murdered. When Grace told her people that they thought she was crazy. That’s when Grace wrote down the three things she knows:
1. She is not crazy.
2. Her mother was murdered.
3. Someday she is going to find the killer and make him pay.

“You should go home now, Grace.” His face is covered in shadow. His voice is soft but strong. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.” Was the common phase told to Grace every day in Adria. After three years, the same three years her mother died, Grace finds herself on a plane back to Adria. She is to stay with her grandfather, one who wasn’t talked to her since her mother, who was his daughter, died. Off the medication, her grandfather does not let her forget that her mother’s death was an accident, and the shooter was a figment of her imagination. But Grace knows what she saw. Paired up with her best friend Noah, old friend Megan, boy-next-door Alexi (he’s Russian), and twelve year old Rosie, the team mission is to take down her mother killer, a scarred man named Dominic. The only issue? No one believed that Dominic did it, as this is not the first time Grace pointed figures about her mother killer. Yet this time she is positive, and decided it time to do some spy work, and bring her mother killer to justice.

Ally Carter is known to write good young adult spy novels, with a bit of romance tossed in there. I, personally did not like it as much as the Gallagher Girls series, or the Heist Society series (which is my favourite) it’s a good book with lots of directions it can go, and has ton of potential. The writing was good and face passed, introducing a lot of characters, but keeping you focused on the main ones. I love how she describes the street as it as they are real countries in a house living next door to each other. From Canada and Germany, the abandon Iran house, to Russia and the United States being neighbour. The love interested of Alexi the boy-next-door, Jamie’s friend and is from Russia, who clearly has a thing for his American neighbour Grace. This books leave you in tears, and laughter as you watch Grace, a girl who is defiantly not crazy, deal with this new world, and trying to bring a killer to justice.


The author's comments:

Where countries are like neighbours. 


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