When Grace Blakely was 13 years old, her mom died in front of her eyes, in what Grace
was told to be an accident. However, Grace was there when her mom died, and she knows that
there was a man with a scar at the place of her mom’s death when she died. And now, three
years later, when she’s 16, Grace is sent to live with her grandfather in the Embassy Row in
Adria, a European country. The Embassy Row is a place filled with different ambassadors and
families of different countries all in Adria. Grace’s grandfather is the USA’s ambassador, so her
father sends her to live with him while he’s away at war. During her time at the Embassy Row
though, Grace sees The Scarred Man who killed her mother. Even though this is not the first
time she has accused someone with a scar of killing her mother, she is positive this time that
she is correct. She starts following The Scarred Man, but every time she gets close to figuring
something out, her grandfather and his secretary stop her each time. Grace is frustrated by this,
so she decides to team up with a few people from other embassies. In the end though, Grace
finds out the truth behind her mother’s death, starting a new problem for Grace to investigate-
the conspiracies behind it.
This book had a nice concept, and even though it wasn’t the best mystery novel I’ve
read, it was pretty unique. Although I gotta admit that sometimes I was kind of bored with the
story, for example, there were some parts that I just had to plow through to get to the more
interesting parts. One of the things I liked about this book was Noah’s character. At first, it
seemed a lot like Grace was kind of depressed after her mother’s death, and after she became
friends with Noah, it seemed like she was starting to find her place at Embassy Row more than
before. This book was pretty interesting overall, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes
a mystery.
The cover was very interesting, and I think it represented the book pretty well. It shows a
girl standing in front of a bunch of buildings, which could represent a city. The girl represents
Grace, and the buildings represent Embassy Row, almost as if it’s her against them in this book,
which it kind of is. There’s also a faded kind of global symbol, which probably represents the
different countries in the embassies. I love the quote on the cover: “Inside every secret, there’s a
world of trouble.” I think that this represents the story the most, because it clearly refers to
Grace’s mother’s death.