Ally Carter

There are many powerful people along Embassy Row who want Grace to block out all her unpretty thoughts. But Grace will not stop until she finds out who killed her mother and make the killer pay.

Daredevil Army brat Grace, the granddaughter of the world's most powerful ambassador, returns to the Embassy Row of her childhood summers to solve the mystery of her mother's death. The plot contains violence. Book #1

All fall down

Melissa Palmer

Book #117 Read in 2014
All Fall Down by Ally Carter

This is the first book in the Embassy Row series. Grace's grandfather is the American Ambassador and she has grown up in the political scene. Three years ago, her mother died and Grace is convinced that she was killed by a man with a scarred face. When she goes to live with her grandfather, she doesn't expect to find that man there...but is he really a killer? Or is this a way that Grace has made up to cope with the loss of her mother. At times, Grace was unlikable but overall she was an interesting character. The plot had good elements of mystery and humor and had an interesting cast of secondary characters. 

I received an ARC of this book from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a honest review.

http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com

Ally Carter was one of the YA authors I always wanted to read but her books were always sold out or not available at our local library. Go figure! Lucky for me, my local independent bookstore had a copy of All Fall Down on sale so I scooped it up! Finally... after years of oggling... I get to enjoy an Ally Carter book! And honestly, it was a fun ride!

This felt like a younger end of the YA spectrum but was extremely fun! It's full of thrills and drama and isn't packed full of romance (although I'm sure a romantic subplot will come later on in this series - there seems to be a good set up for that). Grace's Mother died when she was younger, so she has been living with her brother and Dad. Lucky for her, they ship her off to live with her Grandfather, a powerful ambassador living on Embassy Row. While she's there, Grace gets into all sorts of hijinks and makes new friends, but she thinks she found the man she believes killed her Mother... but everyone is insistent she wasn't murdered. Things aren't going to be easy.

This feels like a very random but fun YA pick for me. It's an easy read with a quick pace and a great mystery. It didn't leave us readers with a big cliffhanger but definitely left us knowing there's more to come if we want to know the full story. 

This book was very engaging and I enjoyed it! I hope to find more books by Ally Carter since this was just all around fun. It felt very basic at times but I also enjoyed how simple the book was. 

Briar's Reviews

Ally Carter was one of the YA authors I always wanted to read but her books were always sold out or not available at our local library. Go figure! Lucky for me, my local independent bookstore had a copy of All Fall Down on sale so I scooped it up! Finally... after years of oggling... I get to enjoy an Ally Carter book! And honestly, it was a fun ride!

This felt like a younger end of the YA spectrum but was extremely fun! It's full of thrills and drama and isn't packed full of romance (although I'm sure a romantic subplot will come later on in this series - there seems to be a good set up for that). Grace's Mother died when she was younger, so she has been living with her brother and Dad. Lucky for her, they ship her off to live with her Grandfather, a powerful ambassador living on Embassy Row. While she's there, Grace gets into all sorts of hijinks and makes new friends, but she thinks she found the man she believes killed her Mother... but everyone is insistent she wasn't murdered. Things aren't going to be easy.

This feels like a very random but fun YA pick for me. It's an easy read with a quick pace and a great mystery. It didn't leave us readers with a big cliffhanger but definitely left us knowing there's more to come if we want to know the full story. 

This book was very engaging and I enjoyed it! I hope to find more books by Ally Carter since this was just all around fun. It felt very basic at times but I also enjoyed how simple the book was. 

Three out of five stars.

Emelie

My expectations for this book was sky-high. I mean the plot sounded really interesting! 

But man, was i wrong?! 

The first 100 pages was really slow and nothing really happened. Instead in r he last 20 pages everything happened. The plot twist was a twist and a second twist and, get this, a Third twist.

I would probably have liked it more if i had lower My expectations a bit!

jess

This is a fun and light read, and the plot was very enjoyable and kept me turning the pages - I finished it at 3AM. I loved the spy undertones - I think I read one of the Gallagher Girls book years back. I don't want to comment on how Grace's specific mental illness was portrayed, but I do think that it could have been handled better. Less resistance to therapy, I guess.

That plot twist. That's all I'm gonna say, but it makes me excited to read the next book. 

Forced romance annoyed me, like it usually does, and it definitely could have gone without. But the main plot was strong.

Campbell Berry

This book had an interesting plot but there wasn't enough action. And I wasn't a big fan of the love triangle. But I loved the book having an unreliable narrator though.

Jessica Guht

Ella Zegarra

Hay muchas cosas que criticar pero me divertí un montón leyendo. La cosa es que conozco a Ally, no puedes dar por segura la trama porque después te la cambia toda. Aún así, hay cositas que no me han agradado (como eso del fútbol y los brasileños que publiqué en mi último status del libro).

Ojalá cuando escriba la reseña tenga más claras mis ideas.

Reseña: También en: El Extraño Gato del Cuento

Más de una vez he mencionado mi amor y admiración por los libros de Ally Carter, una de mis sagas favoritas está escrita por ella, Gallagher Girls. Toca temas bastante interesantes en sus libros, del tipo que me gusta ver en películas, donde hay mucha tecnología y espías, lo que me gusta más es que sus protagonistas son jóvenes. Al menos cuando yo leí por primera vez a Ally Carter, tenía la misma edad que sus protagonistas, entre 16 y 17, no había leído mucho tampoco, por lo que quizá no me di cuenta de algunas cosas.

Por momentos siento que el libro en realidad me gustó pero luego por otros sé que no me gustó tanto como quisiera.

Me gustó porque... Se me hizo fácil de leer, Ally Carter escribe de una manera en que puedes leer por horas y no cansarte, trajo personajes bastante simpáticos y divertidos. Además Alexei, que sale como dos veces nada más, es.. bueno, lindo. Es ruso así que no deje de pensar en otro ruso amor mío cofcofDanilaKozlovzkicofcof. Además que la historia en realidad es interesante, el giro que hay al final no me lo esperaba para nada, fue un poco chocante.

Es solo que tiene muchas cosas que quiero mencionar no me gustaron:

• No me gustó el hecho que resaltará estereotipos, un ejemplo es cuando Grace va la embajada de Brasil, todos están viendo un partido de fútbol. No es que esté mal, pero mientras se recalca que en la embajada de USA tienen cosas importantes que hacer incluso en la madrugada, la Embajada de Brasil podría caer en ataque y nadie se enteraría porque están viendo el fútbol.

• Pensé que el interés amoroso sería de Irán, no había leído la sinopsis, pero sabía que algo tenía que haber con amor prohibido o al menos con un país que USA tenga mucho problema. ¿Pensé en Irán solo por los problemas bélicos? No, lo hice por como Carter resalta el miedo a ese país, y la verdad no me gustó nada.

Quizá sea solo cosa mía pero me malogró mucho la lectura al leer ese uso del estereotipo. Tengo la esperanza que Ally cambie eso en los siguientes libros, por experiencia sé que el romance no es algo fijo en sus historias, en el primer libro nos da uno para cambiarlo por otro en los libros siguientes.

Tiendo a sentirme cómoda y reírme cuando escritores extranjeros utilizas clichés para describir a otros países pero por alguna razón esta vez no pude dejarlo estar, no quiero calificarlo de racista porque sería una exageración, como repito, tengo la esperanza que en los siguientes libros Ally Carter mejore las cosas que no me gustaron en este. Y sobre todo es que no pude dejar de pensar en como se sentirán sus fans Iraníes cuando lean esto, no es que los califique de nada, pero a veces no hay necesidad de usar palabras exactas sino como en el caso de All Fall Down, acciones.

Sin duda un libro que los estadounidenses amarán, es muy patriota del país del águila calva.


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La miel el libro, el oso yo

ashley hopkins

Is it wrong to say I love Ally Carter? I don't think there's one book of hers that I didn't enjoy. That's saying somethin because according to goodreads she's my most read author with 9 books. Nine books! I haven't read that many from Richelle Mead and she's my favorite (or so I thought). 
Anyways, All Fall Down really couldn't of come at a better time for reading because I just finished her Gallagher Girls Series, and was wondering if I would get anymore of her quirky , on the edge, lovable characters like Cammie, Bex, Macey, Liz, Katarina, Hale, or Zach. While they're different stories with different problems they definitely have the Ally Carter-ness to them. :)
We go from Spies, to thieves, to con artists, to a diplomats grand-daughter which I guess could be very similar to the afore mentioned. 
All Fall Down has a bit of a dystopian like feel to it. The world in set up differently. I mean you still have the US and other countries, but it's different.
I liked Grace as a character she understood that sometimes you got to fight for what you believe. 
Things happen that you definitely don't see coming (or maybe you're more perceptive then me and do). Either way be ready for for a shock. ;)
The ending was a killer, and I don't know if I can wait for the second book to come out. This...this is why I try and wait to read the first book.

laura

All fall down: Review This is the first book i read by ally carter and I really loved it.
 
It is set in the fictional country that had embassies of all the different countries and it takes up this long stretch of road and all of the embassies of children that live in them.  This book follows the lead character named Grace and she is haunted by her mothers death even though everyone claims it was an accident. This belief as well as other instances like somebody trying to kill the prime minster lead to a very complicated and interesting story. It was really hard to put down this book because I wanted to know what was going to happen. 
 
I loved all the various kids we met and how simple actions can really effect thing drastically. It was both a self discovery novel but also a finding the truth novel. I really loved both the setting and the characters. Can't wait for the next one. 
 
Check out my non-spolier mash up including All Fall down. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETiVa...

Jeni Enjaian

This book is another of the ones on the South Carolina Junior Book Awards list. When I first heard about this list I had the idealistic goal of reading through each book before the awards were announced. Since then I have no delusions that I will be able to reach that goal but I still am going to try chipping away at the list. 

Out of the four that I have read thus far: Girl on a Wire, The Cure for Dreaming, the Bamboo Rat and now All Fall Down, the latter two far surpass the former.

I am so thankful that we had an unexpected snow day today so that I could devour the rest of the book in one sitting.

I absolutely love how Carter creates a believable world of stealth and intrigue in a fictional-yet-could-be-real world.

She so masterfully characterizes Grace that it is almost as if she ran out of characterization juice when it came to the secondary characters, especially Noah and Alexei. Hopefully this will improve with the books in the rest of the series. (I definitely intend to read the rest of the series.)

I highly recommend this book.

Hope Brockway

UM, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!? 
Review to come when I've gathered my thoughts. XD

Lynn Braden

All Fall Down is the first book in the Embassy Row series. Embassy Row refers to a group of embassies that are all lined up in a row in the country of Adria. The main character, Grace, has come to live with her grandfather who serves as US Ambassador in the American Embassy. Grace's mother was recently killed in a fire. Grace believes she was murdered, but her entire family has spent months trying to convince her that her mother's death was an accident. Throughout the book, there are twists and turns, and we are never quite sure until the end whether Grace is crazy or not. The story was not what I expected, especially a rather heart-wrenching ending without a suggestion of where the series will go from here. I'm not even sure if I want to continue reading it.

Gemma Craig

Awful. I loved The Gallagher Girls series which is why I picked this up. I wish I hadn't. It takes about 6 pages at the end for you to find out what really happened. There's no character development for you to even care about what really happened. The main character, Grace, is just annoying. She feels like everyone is out to get her, when in fact they are trying to keep her from getting hurt. Avoid.