Hello my dear ladies and gentlemen! I hope you are having a great start to your week. Today, I will be reviewing They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall. This was great at parts and boring at others. The plot was interesting and the characters were definitely not what they seemed.
Book: They All Fall Down
Author: Rachel Howzell Hall
Rating: ★★★★☆
Summary:
It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime.
Delighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails off to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico, with six strangers—an ex-cop, a chef, a financial advisor, a nurse, a lawyer, a young widow.
Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses—and all seven strangers harbor a secret.
Danger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keeps the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents keep them suspicious of each other, as one by one . . .
They all fall down
*Miriam. I really liked how Miriam seemed like an okay person who just did a few wrong things. But by the end of the book, I despised her and half wished that she would pay for her crimes, while I also half wished that she could get a second chance to learn from her mistake. She’s also a very unreliable narrator which made it hard to discern whether she was telling the truth, or she was sugar-coating or lying about whatever she said.
*Plot and Setting. The plot was okay. Slow at the start, but once things picked up, most of it didn’t slow down. There were parts which were boring, and others which were exciting. The setting definitely helped enhance the story and added an extra level of despair for the characters.
*Ending and twist. The ending shocked me, and I don’t want to spoil it by telling why. There was a twist that I did not see coming, and the way things ended was brutal but also realistic. A few people have said that this is like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, but I haven’t read it, and I think that made me enjoy TAFD more since I wasn’t comparing the two.
*Characters and their pasts. I think this aspect was rushed and not done well, especially with Wallace. There was a lot of reveals happening at once, and a bit of info-dumping which helped increase the shock factor, but also took away from the thriller aspect because I spent a few minutes trying to process what I’d just read.
*Miriam’s POV. It was a bit annoying and hard to be in Miriam’s head the entire time because she constantly tried to portray herself as the victim, while she was also not what she seemed. The way that she also only cared about money and was really self-centered made it even worse.
I liked this, I would recommend it, and I hope you enjoy it if you read it! Miriam can be annoying, the plot was at first slow and then a bit choppy, but in the end, the twist and revelations saved the book for me. After reviewing it however, I think I’m going to give this 3.5 stars rounded up instead of 4.
One sentence summary: An okay thriller with an interesting plot and an unreliable narrator.
Overall, 3.5 stars rounded up to 4
★★★★☆
That’s it for this book review! Have you read They All Fall Down? What did you think? Did you initially support Miriam too? Have you read And Then There Were None? Do you think that I should give Christie’s book a try? Let’s chat in the comments below!
Eternity Books 