Book Review: All Fall Down by M.J. Arlidge @mjarlidge@orionbooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n #AllFallDown

All Fall Down by M.J. Arlidge is book 9 in the Helen Grace series and it’s a great honour for me to be sharing my review as part of the blog tour. Many thanks go to Orion and Tracy Fenton for the opportunity to read and review.

About the book

“You have one hour to live.”

Those are the only words on the phone call. Then they hang up. Surely, a prank? A mistake? A wrong number? Anything but the chilling truth… That someone is watching, waiting, working to take your life in one hour.

But why?

The job of finding out falls to DI Helen Grace: a woman with a track record in hunting killers. However, this is A case where the killer seems to always be one step ahead of the police and the victims.

With no motive, no leads, no clues – nothing but pure fear – an hour can last a lifetime…

All Fall Down is available to purchase from Amazon | Waterstones | Hive

My thoughts

I read the first Helen Grace book, Eeny Meeny back in 2016 and since then I have been a huge fan. There’s something about the flawed detective that really intrigues me and I’d almost say it’s like meeting up with a friend each time.

In All Fall Down, Helen and her team are tasked with finding a murderer and it’s a task that seems to have the whole team baffled and that’s one of the things I love about these books, you never know what’s coming and only learn things along with the detective. Now you’d think after reading all the books that I’d have an idea of possibly where the author might go, I have learnt to think outside the box but I clearly just don’t think far enough outside the box because each time I am surprised. It’s such a good feeling though.

I didn’t find this book to be as fast paced as some of the others in the series but it’s still filled to the brim with tension and suspense. It’s possibly not quite as gruesome as the others either but it didn’t need to be, it had enough to make you feel on edge and let you feel the fear the victims are feeling.

The characters are still as great as ever, actually more so because the more I read about them and get to know them the more I like them. Helen’s had a tough time over the years so it would be nice to see a bit of happiness for her and Charlie is such a great character as well. They work well together and the friendship they have is great, they’re very different characters but they gel, they look out for each other and really have each other’s backs.

Now one character I absolutely cringe at is Emilia Garinita, the ruthless reporter. Every time she pops up in a book my heckles go up but that’s a good thing. She’s not there to be liked (I hope). She’s irritating and interfering and I don’t how Helen can put up with her half the time but I think she’d be a miss if she wasn’t in the books.

All Fall Down is another great addition to the series, it’s tense, suspenseful and it certainly kept me on my toes. I love how the tension builds basically from page one and it really doesn’t let go until the final conclusion. It gave me chills and had me turning the pages like my life depended on it. It’s so good and definitely can’t wait to read more.

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