All Fall Down by Ally Carter

Title: All Fall Down (Embassy Row #1)

Author: Ally Carter

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Release Date: January 27, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Grace 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.

Being in the book blogging community, I tend to hear about books a long time before they come out. And I mean a LONG time. Ally Carter’s All Fall Down, the first book in her new Embassy Row series was one of those books. And after having heard about it for all those months, I was very excited to finally be able to read it.

Grace has always had a knack for getting herself in trouble. Usually because she was dead set on chasing after her older brother, not afraid to do anything the boys were doing, not matter what that meant. As the granddaughter of one of the most powerful ambassadors in the world, that usually meant that Grace spent her summers running around Embassy Row, sometimes on roofs, sometimes over fences, but very rarely where she was supposed to. Now sixteen, Grace comes back to Embassy Row, but this time, it’s to stay. For the past three years she’s been obsessed with finding out what really happened on the night her mother died. Coming back to Embassy Row could mean finally getting the answers she’s been desperately searching for. But what Grace finds in Adria might be more than she ever bargained for.

Ally Carter is a master at writing spy stories. Though I still have to finish both her Gallagher Girls and Heist Society series (I KNOW GUYS I AM WORKING ON IT), I have loved what I have read. Those stories are always fun and different from the other contemporary stories I typically tend to gravitate to. So I was excited at the idea of a new series from Ally Carter. It didn’t hurt that All Fall Down sounded pretty great. And as someone who spent her high school years around expats and diplomatic families, that particular aspect of the story definitely drew me in. Though believe me when I say that my experience with expats and diplomats was nothing like Grace’s and what you see in the book. The stakes were never quite that high. But that’s besides the point. All Fall Down was a fast-paced story that kept me guessing the whole way through. I kept thinking that I had some part of the mystery figured out, but then Ally Carter would throw in another piece to the puzzle and I would be back at square one. I just couldn’t figure out what was happening. But in a good way. And that ending? I’m already begging for the sequel.

I loved Grace right from page one. How could I not? I mean, she starts off telling her story by saying that she jumped off a wall separating two properties on a dare. And she’s proud that she proved to her brother that the fall wasn’t a deadly one. So yeah, after reading those first few pages, I was sold on Grace. I couldn’t wait to read the rest of her story and find out more about her. Grace was fierce and snarky, not afraid to break the rules. And she was great at convincing others to go along with whatever plan she had, often getting her friends in trouble without meaning to. And she had some great friends who were ready to stand by her side. And I really liked those friends, especially Noah. Noah is the kind of friend I would love to have (not that my friends aren’t great because they absolutely are). He was always ready to stand by Grace, even when she wasn’t being the greatest friend. The character that I’m still trying to figure out, though, is Alexei. At first I thought he was a little shady. Then I discovered that he wasn’t actually. But then something else would happen and I was right back to thinking he was a little shady, but he had good intentions. Hopefully it all becomes more clear in the next book.

I loved Ally Carter’s All Fall Down. It was a great start to what promises to be a fantastic new series. If you’re looking for a fast-paced, action packed story with a mystery, then this is the one for you.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1)

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Release Date: September 18, 2012

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve," Neeve said. "Either you're his true love…or you killed him."

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them--not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He has it all--family money, good looks, devotes friends--but he's looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But ow, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we've never been before.

As excited as I was about Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys, I put off reading it for a long time. It took the book being the pick for book club for me to finally pick it up. And then I proceeded to start kicking myself for having waited to read the book for so long.

Despite living in a house filled with women with psychic powers, Blue has always had some doubts about it all. But when she sees the ghost of a boy on St. Mark's Eve, Blue isn't sure what to believe. Because if she sees this ghost, either he is her true love or he is someone she kills. Her whole life, Blue has been told she would cause her true love's death, so this boy may very well be both. When Blue meets Gansey, the boys whose ghost she saw, she realizes he isn't what she thought he was. With the help of his friends Adam, Ronan and Noah, Gansey has set out on an incredible quest. And he won't stop until he finds what he's looking for.

I'm not entirely sure why I put off reading The Raven Boys for so long. So many of my bookish friends has read the book, loved it and were raving about it to me, and still I wasn't reading it. It took my book club choosing The Raven Boys as our next read for me to finally pick it up off my bookshelf. And as I started reading, I started to understand why people loved the book and had been raving about it. The story itself kind of took me by surprise. I only had a vague idea what it was about when I started reading but it didn't take long for me to get completely caught up in the story. The world and mythology that Maggie Stiefvater created in The Raven Boys was incredible. Despite how fantastical it was, I couldn't help but believe it all. It just felt real and plausible to me. But not just that, I wanted to believe in it. I wanted to believe in Gansey's quest to find Glendower and I wanted to believe in the powers of Blue's family. And I wanted to believe in all that because that's the kind of writer Maggie Stiefvater is. She'll make you believe in the story she wrote, the world she created, and the characters that live in it. 

Maggie Stiefvater is a fantastic writer for many reasons, one of which is that she writes these characters that feel like real people that I could meet out on the street. Her characters are often what draw me in to the story, and it was definitely the case with The Raven Boys. I wanted to know how Blue and Gansey were connected, I wanted to find out more about Ronan and his family's past, I wanted to see if Adam would let someone help him, I wanted to know more about who Noah was. There was something about each of the characters in the story that completely intrigued me and spoke to my curious nature. There was just so much about them I wanted to know. And though I did get some answers in The Raven Boys, there's still so much more I want to know and I'm looking forward to getter those answers in future books. 

I can now say I understand why everyone loves Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys because I do too. This is a book that has so much working in its favour: fantastic characters, a magical world, and a captivating story. I can't wait to find out more when I finally get around to reading the sequel, The Dream Thieves.

Waiting on Wednesday (55)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine where book bloggers devote a post to an upcoming release they are particularly looking forward to.

THIS WEEK'S PICK:

THE RAVEN BOYS BY MAGGIE STIEFVATER

"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve," Neeve said. "Either you're his true love…or you killed him."

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them--not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He has it all--family money, good looks, debated friends--but he's looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we've never been before.

Maggie Stiefvater is a fantastic writer so I would read just about anything she writes. Here, it helps that The Raven Boys sounds like a fantastic read. The premise sounds really interesting and like the perfect mix of darkness and romance. I can't wait for September to come around so I can read what sounds like a fantastic book.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater will be published September 18, 2012 by Scholastic Press.