They All Fall Down starts with one of those openings that lets you know it’s going to be a good book…

“Charlie cut her wrists last week with a shard of caramelized sugar.

We’d made the sugar sheets together in the clinic’s kitchen earlier in the day, under Joni’s beady-eyed supervision.

‘Yours are thick enough to do yourself an injury.’ I’d said to Charlie, as a joke.

‘I wonder if that’s what gave her the idea,’ Odelle commented afterwards, pointedly.”

And from here, for me, it just got better. 

One of the things I loved most about it was the setting – a private psychiatric clinic – and the characters – most of whom are at the clinic because they have mental health issues – and how much this keeps you guessing throughout the book.

It means every character is unreliable, either because of their mental health conditions, including the drugs they find themselves on, or because they are getting their information from the aforesaid people.  It means they might want to believe – but can they?  This is especially true for Hannah, one of the central characters and a “service user”, and her mom.  The reason Hannah is in the clinic is slow to be revealed but puts her mother Corinne’s initial reluctance to believe her daughter into perspective.

Can she believe Hannah when she is told Charlie didn’t kill herself or is her daughter getting worse, despite promises from the doctors she would get better once admitted?  It’s a question that you, as a reader, are trying to answer too as you hear event from both Hannah and Corinne’s view points.  As each works to uncover the truth, secrets are revealed about other people at the clinic – doctors and patients – and you realise that not everything is as it seems.  It doesn’t help I liked them both so wanted to believe both of them.

Peppered throughout is Laura, a member of staff, whose story initially doesn’t seem to be linked to what is happening at the clinic until it comes together near the end, turning a lot of what you have learnt on the head.  Which is the next best thing about this book – it had brilliant twists and turns which kept me guessing and second-guessing.  Add to that the writing – which I thought was excellent – and it all made for a great book, one I loved reading and would highly recommend.

The Book Blurb…

She knows there’s a killer on the loose.
But no-one believes her.
Will she be next?

Hannah had a normal life – a loving husband, a good job. Until she did something shocking.

Now she’s in a psychiatric clinic. It should be a safe place. But patients keep dying.

The doctors say it’s suicide. Hannah knows they’re lying.

Can she make anyone believe her before the killer strikes again?

Enjoy!

Emma x

Source: Netgalley
Publisher: Penguin (Transworld Digital)
Format: ebook
Published: 13th JulyGoodreads, 2017
Pages: 384
Find on: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads

Note: I received a copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review.  All thoughts, feelings and opinions are my own