I've been feeling like garbage today, spending most of it in and out of sleep, and I think that helped contribute to feeling a strange haze of surrealism while reading the last third of this novel. It totally worked for me, especially when I remember that this novel is being compared very heavily to the movie Get Out.
Ace of Spades follows Devon and Chiamaka, the only black students at a very prestigious private school. In the last months of their senior year, they're suddenly targeted by an anonymous person named Aces who begins to leak private messages, photos, and videos of the two students.
Dealing with the harassment provides a pretty interesting way for us to learn about Devon and Chiamaka as characters. We get to see them as they go through the upheaval in their current lives, and it provides us a way to get some backstory on both as they try to figure out if anything in their pasts will be revealed.
Àbíké-Íyímídé writes with breakneck pacing, fleshing out her main characters as the plot steadily moves forward. She creates antagonists that range from the threat of a single person, to Devon and Chiamaka facing the monster that is systemic racism. It very much earns the comparisons to Get Out in that regard.
One of the few things that I didn't vibe with as much were the side characters. There were good attempts at fleshing out a couple of characters that were important in Devon and Chiamaka's lives, but I didn't feel like they were real - simply cardboard cut outs with a bit more meat to them. Another issue I outright disliked, and I dislike in much YA, was that neither of them talked to their parents about a single thing. NEITHER OF THEM. Devon does at some point talk to his mom, but he doesn't actually tell her what is going on. Their parents felt like background props that the main actors sometimes interacted with.
Ultimately, this did end up being a thrilling read, and one that feels more unique in YA to me. I enjoyed my time flipping through it, wanting to know what was going on and eventually how the mystery would be resolved. I think it did nearly go off the rails in the last act, but as a cohesive novel with a specific theme and story to tell, it was great.
Ace of Spades follows Devon and Chiamaka, the only black students at a very prestigious private school. In the last months of their senior year, they're suddenly targeted by an anonymous person named Aces who begins to leak private messages, photos, and videos of the two students.
Dealing with the harassment provides a pretty interesting way for us to learn about Devon and Chiamaka as characters. We get to see them as they go through the upheaval in their current lives, and it provides us a way to get some backstory on both as they try to figure out if anything in their pasts will be revealed.
Àbíké-Íyímídé writes with breakneck pacing, fleshing out her main characters as the plot steadily moves forward. She creates antagonists that range from the threat of a single person, to Devon and Chiamaka facing the monster that is systemic racism. It very much earns the comparisons to Get Out in that regard.
One of the few things that I didn't vibe with as much were the side characters. There were good attempts at fleshing out a couple of characters that were important in Devon and Chiamaka's lives, but I didn't feel like they were real - simply cardboard cut outs with a bit more meat to them. Another issue I outright disliked, and I dislike in much YA, was that neither of them talked to their parents about a single thing. NEITHER OF THEM. Devon does at some point talk to his mom, but he doesn't actually tell her what is going on. Their parents felt like background props that the main actors sometimes interacted with.
Ultimately, this did end up being a thrilling read, and one that feels more unique in YA to me. I enjoyed my time flipping through it, wanting to know what was going on and eventually how the mystery would be resolved. I think it did nearly go off the rails in the last act, but as a cohesive novel with a specific theme and story to tell, it was great.