All Fall Down - Ally Carter

All Fall Down by Ally Carter
Series: Embassy Row #1
Published by Scholastic on January 27, 2015
Pages: 320
Genres: Mystery, Adventure, Espionage

Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss

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A new series of global proportions -- from master of intrigue, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Ally Carter.

This exciting new series from NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Ally Carter focuses on Grace, who can best be described as a daredevil, an Army brat, and a rebel. She is also the only granddaughter of perhaps the most powerful ambassador in the world, and Grace has spent every summer of her childhood running across the roofs of Embassy Row.

Now, at age sixteen, she's come back to stay -- in order to solve the mystery of her mother's death. In the process, she uncovers an international conspiracy of unsettling proportions, and must choose her friends and watch her foes carefully if she and the world are to be saved.

What I loved:
· Grace: she’s an amazing main character and I knew it was love at first sight when I was laughing out loud with one of her snarky comebacks right on the first pages, she doesn’t take shit and always stand to herself and what she believes it’s true, also being raised with her military brother and father turned her able to kick-ass too.
· The mystery: all through the book I was at the edge of my seat trying to figure out what the hell had happened on the night Grace’s mother died, Grace’s flashbacks and her reactions to them are so crazy and everyone seemed to be hiding stuff that it made me turn the pages very quickly – and I have to say I didn’t see that ending coming, now thinking back at some point I should have realized but I was so into the story and so worried on getting to the ending soon so I could find out everything that I didn’t really thought much about the hints while reading.
· The setting: there is so much things that can be done on this setting! With Embassy for various countries of the world and all their rivalries it was so intriguing to see how heated things could turn out to be by just let's see... A scarf be saw on the wrong place *winks*

What I think could have been better:
· Noah, Megan & Rosie: Grace’s friends on the Embassy row just felt really… Forced. I mean, Noah starts to hang out with her because he’s told to do so and them a few chapters later they’re both really considering each other best friends, and okay Grace never really had many friends but still it was awkward. Despite this very sudden connection I did enjoyed these characters and always loved they’re on the pages, it was super cool their little group searching for clues together and the funniest moments are on their interactions so I kind of feel hard very quickly for them too? Oops, but I do expect to see more of them, not just helping Grace, having lives and interests outside the main mystery on the others books of the series.
· Alexei: this characters suffers from his little time on the book (at least I thought it was little), he seemed an interesting character and I was hoping for a romance between him and Grace since their first interaction but there wasn’t enough scenes with them for me to get fully invested. Hopefully the sequel will remedy that!

Overall this book was everything that I was hoping for and a little more, it was funny and snarky but it also had some emotional moments (I even teared up a little bit), the mystery took me by surprise and I loved the interactions between Grace and her friends/probably-future-boyfriend. I recommend it to every lover of detective things (like Veronica Mars) and people looking for a fast paced read that it’s fluffy but also not fluffy at all (this doesn’t make any sense, but it totally makes sense with this book).