The Book:
All That Fall by Kris Calvin, 2018
The Characters:
Emma
Her best friend Kate and Kate’s son Luke
Emma’s ex-lover Tommy who is a cop
Tommy’s coworkers Alibi and Jackie O
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
When Emma Lawson, the youngest lead government ethics investigator in California’s capital, takes a day off to help her best friend, Kate, prepare for the opening of her new business, Rainbow Alley Preschool, the morning takes a shocking turn.
The school’s most high-profile enrollee–Vivian Lange, the governor’s granddaughter–is kidnapped, at the same time Kate’s teenage son, Luke, goes missing. Emma is quickly drawn to a web of clues that point toward sordid secrets and a cold-case murder in a shadow world of bigotry and hate.
Over a desperate and harrowing forty-eight hours, Emma races against the clock to solve the most important investigation of her life. But will she be in time to bring the child to safety and to stop a calculating killer whose plan threatens all that Emma holds dear?
The Twist:
Samson was linked to a white supremicist who owned the bike shop where he worked. Samson was Tommy’s CI, reporting to him on the bike shop owner. Greg had killed Tommy’s wife, thinking he was killing Tommy. Lee had killed Samson. Dylan was just kind of creepy, but not nefarious.
Luke pretended to be one of the drivers in order to survive and save Vivian.
The Ending:
Emma managed to escape from Lee, Barry, and Greg. Alibi and Jackie O figured out Luke’s coded message, and arrived just after Emma had incapacitated everyone. Kate and Dylan survived. Vivian was returned to her parents. It seems like Alibi and Emma will be working together again in the future.
The Review:
Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced listener’s copy of All That Fall! The blurb of this one sounded a little like Mother May I, with a woman racing a clock to save a child.
There were a lot of characters introduced in the first few chapters. On audio, it’s a little difficult to keep track of this many characters without being able to flip back and forth to remember who’s who. As it turns out, many of the characters introduced in the first couple chapters of this book were largely inconsequential to the plot. This all likely would have been clearer reading a physical book, but 25% of the way through this book I was rather confused about who everyone was.
Once I got the hang of who the important characters were, I loved this story. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it just focused on Emma, Vivian, Luke, and the kidnapping plot, without the other confusion.
Luke’s character was amazing–he was quick thinking and smart, as well as sensitive to little Vivian. The ending of this book seemed like it was a setup for more books about Emma and Alibi, and I’m hoping we see more of Luke in the future too.
