Ally Carter
Series: Embassy Row #1
Genre: YA Mystery Thriller
Hardback: 320 Pages
Publication: January 20, 2015
by Scholastic Press
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 believes 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 keeping 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.
Nobody believes Grace about the cause of her mother’s death. Documentation officially claims that her mother’s death is an accident. However, Grace’s memories of the night of the fire include a man with a scar . . . murdering her mother.
The storyline is set the American Embassy in Adria, a nonexistent country in European. It is a place that is glamorous and dangerous at the same time. One wrong move can cause an international crisis. I enjoyed getting to know Embassy Row and the other countries.
I also love Grace. She is brave, stubborn, and determined to find the truth of her mother’s death. Her character is complicated. Though she doesn’t trust people easily, she is desperate for someone to trust her. I feel for Grace; she has gone through a lot and continues to grow over the course of the novel.
Grace has a new group of friends waiting for her when she gets to Embassy Row. I like the friendship between Grace and Noah as well as the friendship that she develops with Megan and Rosie, who are always willing to risk everything to help her. We also meet Alexei, Grace’s older brother’s best friend and the son of the Russian Ambassador. I know that they all really care about Grace. Nevertheless, I would have love to learn more about all of them. They could have been developed more.
I enjoyed the mystery element of the story and the originality of the book’s setting. I also really like how the emphasis is on the political tensions between the embassies. I am looking forward to see more information unravel and to find out what happens next for Grace in the next book.
An ARC was provided by Scholastic for review
Rating: 4 stars
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Author: alice
Alice is a stay-at-home mom of two children. Her favorite books are those send icy tingles down her spine, such as a good mystery or thriller, but she also enjoys a good hear-throbbing romance. She enjoys listening to music and drinking a cup of tea while reading and working.
Ms. Yingling says
I adore the Gallagher Girls series, but this was so, so sad. Still contemplating buying it for my middle school library.