All Fall Down

"I have had a hard time sitting down and reading a book the whole way through without getting distracted. This book swallowed me up and refused to let me go. There were plot twists and plenty of moments of second-hand embarrassment. I have read this author's Gallagher Girl Academy Series and her standalone Not If I Save You First. There is just something about Ally Carter's books that are so addicting to read."

"I was in grade 6 when I bought and first read this book. It's been (more than) six years, my god. I guess this might've been the actual, for real this time, first YA book I ever read. Which means that the younger audience and extreme amounts of melodrama didn't even catch on my radar at the time. I was the target audience, and everything Grace ever did was completely justifiable to my 11 year old mind. I never found her annoying in the slightest, even when she repeats like 7 times virtually identical lines about how likely she is to make the city fall down and that she hates/can't respect people for caring about her. Girl has some extreme self image issues. Girl cannot take a step back. But can't we all relate to thinking we're the worst thing in the world but also the most important? Just most, things are the most. I feel like that is a phase we all must get through to some degree. And in Grace's case...<spoiler> well, she wasn't really wrong, was she? </spoiler><br/><br/>I was worried that this reread would kill my fond memories of this book. I was lucky and I was wrong because this will always be a comfort read for me, and I will always be on board with it because I got into it at the right time, even if future books like it might not fly with my current tastes, and I should've known this from my 39 clues reread binge last year. I'm grateful for that.<br/><br/>One thing that has always slightly itched about this book is how much of a fever dream the last 10 percent feels like in a way that doesn't hit completely what it's going for for me. Tension is just weirdly gone and..hold on...is she literally locked in a literal tower??? The pacing and tension is so tight up to then and the scenes so purposeful and then the ending is still not the worst or anything but idk.<br/><br/>Also in previous reads I noticed that Carter reuses the name Petrovic/Petrovich in two of her series, but this is the first time I noticed that Valancia feels potentially Dubrovnik-inspired. Which is kinda cool."

"Absolutely LOVED this triology. I reread it all the time and it will be one of my favorites for a long time!"

"I was on the edge of my seat reading this. I am not one to want to read but when I found this book I sat still and read it for hours and was sad when I had to return it to the library. Don’t want to spoil it but it is definitely murder mystery vibes.!!"

"Yeahhhh ok? Sure why not"

"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).<br/><br/>Ojalá cuando escriba la reseña tenga más claras mis ideas.<br/><br/>Reseña: También en: <a href="http://el-extrano-gato-del-cuento.blogspot.com/2015/02/book-review-all-fall-down-ally-carter.html">El Extraño Gato del Cuento</a><br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>Por momentos siento que el libro en realidad me gustó pero luego por otros sé que no me gustó tanto como quisiera.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>Es solo que tiene muchas cosas que quiero mencionar no me gustaron:<br/><br/>• 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.<br/><br/>• 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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>Sin duda un libro que los estadounidenses amarán, es muy patriota del país del águila calva.<br/><br/><br/><a href="https://twitter.com/EllieIntheHat">Twitter</a> || <a href="http://el-extrano-gato-del-cuento.blogspot.com/">Blog</a> || <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/EllaZegarra/">Pinterest</a> || <a href="http://ellie-in-the-hat.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> || <a href="http://instagram.com/ellieinthehat">Instagram</a> || <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ElBlogDelGato">Facebook</a><br/><br/>La miel el libro, el oso yo<br/><br/><img src="http://media.giphy.com/media/vomaXQhXv1cBi/giphy.gif" />"

"There are 3 books in this series but it is a really fun and quick read! All of Ally Carter’s books are super enjoyable but this one really hooked me"

"It was so interesting, there where plot twists I didn't expect and the characters grew as the story went on. Sometimes it's amazing to see how much a single event can change a characters life."

"I knew immediately when I started reading this book that it was not going to go well. When I got to page 19 and I read "Like a bear bedeviled by mosquito's, he shook his big, square head." I burst out laughing, except it wasn't meant to be funny. And the book is full of the same corny, clunky writing. But it's not just that that makes this book truly awful. You would think that after such a catastrophic natural disaster that has "rendered machinery useless", "cities no longer habitable", "farmland that can no longer produce food" and "climate across the globe getting colder every day" people would be freaking out just a little and having a harder time of things, but no there is no sense of urgency at all. Characters also do things that really make no sense in such a supposedly dire setting. One woman is in a refugee camp and on food rations. She decides after seeing a "fat-assed white cat" that ignores her, that the next logical course of action for her in this post apocolyptic world is get a puppy, yes a puppy. Even though there is no dog food in the camp (she would have to share her rations) and other dogs have starved.<br/><br/>"A puppy?" She said,and nodded to herself. "A puppy." They wouldn't be hard to find. And something that wouldn't care for her just on account of what she did for it seemed especially wonderful right after she'd visited the administration building.<br/><br/>*bangs head against wall*<br/><br/>After initially stopping at page 19 and then again at page 33, I forced myself to read further mostly out of sheer morbid curiosity. I got about half way through and then I just couldn't take any more."