Intriguing and important

filled star filled star filled star filled star star unfilled
craftshley Avatar

By

Everyone has secrets. But not everyone has their deepest secrets texted to the school for everyone to see. Devon is one of only two black students at Niveus High, Chiamaka being the other. Devon is from the other side of the tracks, with a single mother who works three jobs to keep him and his two brothers happy. He’s a nobody, at Niveus to receive a top notch education and get into Juilliard. Chiamaka comes from privilege and she has a carefully maintained popular persona that she’s done everything to maintain. She dreams of going to Yale and studying medicine. As Ace blasts the entire school with their secrets, their dreams are going down the drain and their relationships are in tatters. They have to work together to discover who is behind all this, before things get seriously dangerous and before all the secrets they’ve worked so hard to hide are all out in the open.

Ace of Spades is so suspenseful, some serious Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl vibes, here. The switching POV chapters make it even more so, jumping from one POV to another right when something interesting happens to the other person. It kept me reading long past when I should have been getting ready for bed! Though Chiamaka is portrayed as a horrible person in the beginning, I found myself identifying with her as we got to know her. Devon is still my favorite, though, since I identify most closely with his background and family difficulties. Chi’s family is more absent from her life, aloof. They’re both complete people from the start, their secrets and mannerisms slowly revealed, both through Ace and their own internal monologues. I was barely a quarter of the way through and I was already feeling so upset by everything! In less than two weeks, everything about their life feels changed and even their futures at Niveus seem in jeopardy, much less their wider future: college, jobs. Even their lives.

As the book goes on, the tension heightens to...well, an ending I did not like. It did not fit the hype of the entire book leading up to it, not at all. It felt too easy, too predictable. The big reveal happened about three quarters of the way through the book and that was pretty shocking. But then what Deveon and Chiamaka do about it seems like not enough; it seems too gullible and trusting in a system that I know has let them down, especially Devon since his family doesn’t even have money. I found Chiamaka and Devon to be far too gullible, not being suspicious enough of coincidences and clues left in the story for the reader, that they should have noticed and questioned, too. There were so many unanswered questions! A couple bits and plotlines that were hinted at and then dropped completely. I just...the ending doesn’t measure up to my expectations from the rest of the book.

I loved the setting and how Niveus was built up to be this amazing academy before everything starts to go wrong for Chiamaka and Devon. I thought, at first, that the school was in the UK somewhere, or at least Europe, because of the descriptions. It took me quite a while and a little bit of confusion, to figure out that it’s set in America, probably near the east coast and maybe in New York. It honestly felt like an episode of Black Mirror for most of the book, with a suspicious person sending messages to everyone and people in masks following Devon and Chi. Niveus was supposed to be how Chi and Devon were to succeed and now everything seems to be going down the drain. I expected the both of them to be more upset than they were but everything happens so quickly after they discover what’s going on that maybe they’re in shock?

This book is an excellent example of the systemic racism the world participates in. Even if you’re rich and beautiful and successful, people will still look down on you. Even if you’re smart and talented, people will still degrade you. They will treat you like the diversity hire or the affirmative action choice and so hold it against you--as if you succeeding is because of your skin color and nothing else. As if you aren’t at least just as good as everyone else, and don’t have to work a million times harder to fight against the stereotypes. Why do people resent people of color for succeeding? Why are their accomplishments seen as less because what they look like? I really appreciated the comments and questions this book had in regards to racism and how Devon especially couldn’t see that racism could be the reason he and Chiamaka were being targeted. Which, considering they were the only two black students in an entire school of white people, and they were the only ones being targeted, is pretty willfully ignorant. I know Devon wants to get into the school of his dreams and keeping his head down and doing his work is his way of doing that but seriously.

Even though I found the ending to be lacking, the suspense build up was fun and kept me reading until the end. Though as I watched the percentage left tick down, I kept thinking, how is this gonna end? Is this the end? Is this really the end? And then the tension dissolved into disappointment. Even so, I really enjoyed the majority of this book and the concepts it dealt with, as well as the academy setting, though school wasn’t a feature. Not a lot of homework being done, or tests being taken. This is a part I weirdly enjoy about school set novels and I was missing it. I think because homework wasn’t getting done, I was getting anxious and wondered at the fact that neither of our characters were getting anxiety from incomplete assignments after years of academic excellence. I also think there should have been more suspense--more texts from Ace, more getting followed and having pictures taken, more exposure of Devon’s and Chiamaka’s secrets.

This book has many things in common with a lot of YA series that I enjoy. Pretty Little Liars, Scream Queens, Private (by Kate Brian), Gossip Girl...I definitely think others will enjoy this book as well as the important topics it touches on like systemic racism, gaslighting, and queer topics as well as many others. The storytelling felt honest and relatable, very realistic, and Chi and Devon were both likable characters, complicated and well thought out. I think that, even though the ending was not my thing, the characters and suspense building were enough for me to rate this book well. I sincerely look forward to reading more from Faridah.