REVIEW: All Fall Down
Oct. 6th, 2025 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllAll Fall Down: Ally Carter
Embassy Row 1, Orchard Books, 2015
I’ve read the Gallagher Girls and Heist Society series by Ally Carter, preferring the latter. One thing ‘All Fall Down’ shares with them is that one of the heroine’s parents is dead. Perhaps Carter might want to branch out and have an orphan as a heroine, or even, have both the heroine's parents still be living one day.
Here, our heroine is Grace Blakely, who has come to live on ‘Embassy Row’, as the street where the big embassies to Adria are located is called. Adria is a great name for a Ruritania-esque country, somewhere in Europe, possibly a bit like Turkey without the Islamic influence, although equally, a bit like Genovia (the made-up country in ‘The Princess Diaries’) in that it’s a very old background for an American heroine. Aged sixteen, Grace has been brought back to the US embassy, where she spent much of her childhood, to live with her grandfather again, because her military father is on another deployment, her older brother is at West Point and her mother is dead.
The return is fraught, because Grace is the traumatised witness of her mother’s death in a fire, when Grace was thirteen. She hadn’t seen her grandfather (her mother’s father) or returned to Adria in the meantime. During that time, she spent time in hospital, which didn’t help her mental distress much and moved about a lot. The embassy as close to home as anywhere for her, but her grandfather and his proxy, Ms Chancellor, have decided to give Grace her mother’s old bedroom instead of the one she used to use. Like many other decisions her caretakers have made, it seems like a bad one.
For much of the book, Grace is subject to flashbacks and panic attacks, a desire to run when pressured or reminded of her mother or the fire. She’s internalised rejection, is used to being labelled difficult, ‘crazy’ and disbelieved. For she knows she saw the man who murdered her mother, a man with a scar, and that her mother’s death was no accident. But nobody believes her. Instead she is brought to a place where anything going awry with the neighbours could cause a diplomatic incident. Her grandfather is the US ambassador.
Of course things go awry with the neighbours when Grace keeps reliving the past, when she sees the Scarred Man in Adria, hears him plotting and her grandfather won’t believe her. The boy next door is Alexei, her brother’s best friend, who promised him he’d look after Grace in his stead. I found that a bit obnoxious, but apparently he has deep, deep blue eyes. He’s also the Russian ambassador’s son. Ms Chancellor claims to be Grace’s friend, but wants to force her into a pink ballgown and the stressful, public-facing role of ‘lady of the house'.
Grace reunites with or meets other kids on Embassy Row, but can she trust them? Can they trust her? Slowly, pertinent questions arise like why the Scarred Man would want to kill Caroline Blakely, an antiques dealer, army wife, mother of two and generally beloved. And then Grace overhears something that makes her think he may kill again.
So, there’s a lot going on here. Carter’s books are set in heightened realities, where her main characters have relatable issues with family, authority figures, peers and figuring out boys. The Gallagher Girls go to a school for spies, Heist Society is Ocean’s Eleven with teenagers. Embassy Row is about a deeply damaged individual trying to solve a mystery for personal reasons against a diplomatic backdrop. There are allusions to self-harm, to medical treatment for mental distress and very graphic scenes where the past comes to life for Grace, having harmful physical consequences. I felt uncomfortable reading it, and although the specifics of Grace’s trauma are unlikely to be triggering for vulnerable readers, the panic attacks, the memories of being restrained and drugged up, the (justified) paranoia and the way so many people handle her seem very raw. I would have felt better had the author acknowledged she'd had help from a psychologist or such an expert in handling this in her notes, but she didn't.
The diplomatic world is depicted in a broadbrush way. For one thing, aren’t US ambassadors a presidential appointee, and therefore likely to get switched around every term? William Vincent having been in post for decades – long enough to marry an Adrian subject and have grandchildren now verging into adulthood – stretched my credulity. As soon as the Russians were introduced, I was checking the publication date and thinking ‘Huh, after the invasion of Crimea’, but apart from vague comments that things are even more tricky in this post-Cold War era, and that’s why Alexei’s father doesn’t approve of American Grace (well, that, and that she attacked him in the middle of a full-blown panic attack), nothing much. Iran’s embassy to Adria is empty, and although the grounds are the hang-out spot for the diplomatic kids, when Grace recklessly goes inside to rescue an Israeli girl’s scarf, most characters think that’s a big deal. I wouldn’t say that this book was likely to enhance anyone’s understanding of the state of the world in the mid 2010s.
My favourite parts involved Grace’s interaction with other girls, from her takedown of would-be queen bee Lila, to her finding out that the Megan she’d known since childhood wasn’t the real Megan at all (Megan feels like a Gallagher girl, even though she isn’t one. Maybe her mother was.) There’s also German Rosie, physically gifted, but perpetually undervalued simply because she’s a 12 year old girl.
Grace herself, apart from the trauma and terrible past three years that she isn’t coping very well with, is an interesting mix. Rootless, because of being an army brat, she used to follow her brother and Alexei around, but got rejected by them. She’s a tomboy, not bothered by heights, trained to keep herself physically safe. Emotionally, she’s a mess – her relationship with her family members is now distant – and she only seems to be expected to behave, then tired excuses are made for when she doesn’t. She’s under the spotlight for a short while and then left to her own devices. When Noah, a Brazilian-Israeli boy of her age, turns up and announces they’re going to be best friends (and he seems to have a thing for Megan, while Alexei is the love interest), Grace is defensive, then lets him in, needing someone to believe her and to treat her as though she’s normal.
And then we get the big reveals by the end of the story. Grace’s personal mystery is solved, but the ramifications are revealed – I’m trying to be vague – and you realise, ‘Oh, so this story is a teen version of that property. Maybe.’ It is very much in the modern YA style, featuring short, snappy sentences. I generally thought that Carter was writing other characters for their impact on Grace instead of coherently – although I liked the depth added to Megan, Noah and, I suppose, Alexei. You follow it in the moment, and the story is very propulsive, but trying to categorise it without giving spoilers is difficult.
Embassy Row 1, Orchard Books, 2015
I’ve read the Gallagher Girls and Heist Society series by Ally Carter, preferring the latter. One thing ‘All Fall Down’ shares with them is that one of the heroine’s parents is dead. Perhaps Carter might want to branch out and have an orphan as a heroine, or even, have both the heroine's parents still be living one day.
Here, our heroine is Grace Blakely, who has come to live on ‘Embassy Row’, as the street where the big embassies to Adria are located is called. Adria is a great name for a Ruritania-esque country, somewhere in Europe, possibly a bit like Turkey without the Islamic influence, although equally, a bit like Genovia (the made-up country in ‘The Princess Diaries’) in that it’s a very old background for an American heroine. Aged sixteen, Grace has been brought back to the US embassy, where she spent much of her childhood, to live with her grandfather again, because her military father is on another deployment, her older brother is at West Point and her mother is dead.
The return is fraught, because Grace is the traumatised witness of her mother’s death in a fire, when Grace was thirteen. She hadn’t seen her grandfather (her mother’s father) or returned to Adria in the meantime. During that time, she spent time in hospital, which didn’t help her mental distress much and moved about a lot. The embassy as close to home as anywhere for her, but her grandfather and his proxy, Ms Chancellor, have decided to give Grace her mother’s old bedroom instead of the one she used to use. Like many other decisions her caretakers have made, it seems like a bad one.
For much of the book, Grace is subject to flashbacks and panic attacks, a desire to run when pressured or reminded of her mother or the fire. She’s internalised rejection, is used to being labelled difficult, ‘crazy’ and disbelieved. For she knows she saw the man who murdered her mother, a man with a scar, and that her mother’s death was no accident. But nobody believes her. Instead she is brought to a place where anything going awry with the neighbours could cause a diplomatic incident. Her grandfather is the US ambassador.
Of course things go awry with the neighbours when Grace keeps reliving the past, when she sees the Scarred Man in Adria, hears him plotting and her grandfather won’t believe her. The boy next door is Alexei, her brother’s best friend, who promised him he’d look after Grace in his stead. I found that a bit obnoxious, but apparently he has deep, deep blue eyes. He’s also the Russian ambassador’s son. Ms Chancellor claims to be Grace’s friend, but wants to force her into a pink ballgown and the stressful, public-facing role of ‘lady of the house'.
Grace reunites with or meets other kids on Embassy Row, but can she trust them? Can they trust her? Slowly, pertinent questions arise like why the Scarred Man would want to kill Caroline Blakely, an antiques dealer, army wife, mother of two and generally beloved. And then Grace overhears something that makes her think he may kill again.
So, there’s a lot going on here. Carter’s books are set in heightened realities, where her main characters have relatable issues with family, authority figures, peers and figuring out boys. The Gallagher Girls go to a school for spies, Heist Society is Ocean’s Eleven with teenagers. Embassy Row is about a deeply damaged individual trying to solve a mystery for personal reasons against a diplomatic backdrop. There are allusions to self-harm, to medical treatment for mental distress and very graphic scenes where the past comes to life for Grace, having harmful physical consequences. I felt uncomfortable reading it, and although the specifics of Grace’s trauma are unlikely to be triggering for vulnerable readers, the panic attacks, the memories of being restrained and drugged up, the (justified) paranoia and the way so many people handle her seem very raw. I would have felt better had the author acknowledged she'd had help from a psychologist or such an expert in handling this in her notes, but she didn't.
The diplomatic world is depicted in a broadbrush way. For one thing, aren’t US ambassadors a presidential appointee, and therefore likely to get switched around every term? William Vincent having been in post for decades – long enough to marry an Adrian subject and have grandchildren now verging into adulthood – stretched my credulity. As soon as the Russians were introduced, I was checking the publication date and thinking ‘Huh, after the invasion of Crimea’, but apart from vague comments that things are even more tricky in this post-Cold War era, and that’s why Alexei’s father doesn’t approve of American Grace (well, that, and that she attacked him in the middle of a full-blown panic attack), nothing much. Iran’s embassy to Adria is empty, and although the grounds are the hang-out spot for the diplomatic kids, when Grace recklessly goes inside to rescue an Israeli girl’s scarf, most characters think that’s a big deal. I wouldn’t say that this book was likely to enhance anyone’s understanding of the state of the world in the mid 2010s.
My favourite parts involved Grace’s interaction with other girls, from her takedown of would-be queen bee Lila, to her finding out that the Megan she’d known since childhood wasn’t the real Megan at all (Megan feels like a Gallagher girl, even though she isn’t one. Maybe her mother was.) There’s also German Rosie, physically gifted, but perpetually undervalued simply because she’s a 12 year old girl.
Grace herself, apart from the trauma and terrible past three years that she isn’t coping very well with, is an interesting mix. Rootless, because of being an army brat, she used to follow her brother and Alexei around, but got rejected by them. She’s a tomboy, not bothered by heights, trained to keep herself physically safe. Emotionally, she’s a mess – her relationship with her family members is now distant – and she only seems to be expected to behave, then tired excuses are made for when she doesn’t. She’s under the spotlight for a short while and then left to her own devices. When Noah, a Brazilian-Israeli boy of her age, turns up and announces they’re going to be best friends (and he seems to have a thing for Megan, while Alexei is the love interest), Grace is defensive, then lets him in, needing someone to believe her and to treat her as though she’s normal.
And then we get the big reveals by the end of the story. Grace’s personal mystery is solved, but the ramifications are revealed – I’m trying to be vague – and you realise, ‘Oh, so this story is a teen version of that property. Maybe.’ It is very much in the modern YA style, featuring short, snappy sentences. I generally thought that Carter was writing other characters for their impact on Grace instead of coherently – although I liked the depth added to Megan, Noah and, I suppose, Alexei. You follow it in the moment, and the story is very propulsive, but trying to categorise it without giving spoilers is difficult.
