Review by wardenred - Ace of Spades

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wardenred 's review for:

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

4.0

challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Growing up, I realized quite quickly that people hate being called racist more than they hate racism itself.

I have to admit I have a bit of mixed feelings about this book, mainly centered around the major plot twist/revelation, or maybe around the way it was helpful. Still, I enjoyed it and would recommend the hell out of it. It's a compelling, well-written YA thriller that raises a lot of very serious questions and I feel does a superb job of painting the effects of systemic racism and classism on individuals. The promised Dark Academia vibes didn't kick in for me until a couple chapters in—the beginning read like just another high school YA—but once the flavor was there, it was there. The characters are complex and richly drawn. It took Devon some time to grow on me (and now he's forever in my heart); Chiamaka, on the contrary, had my attention from her first appearance and only got more interesting to follow from there with each chapter.

The pacing was pretty good, with the tension raising in steady bursts, making it hard to stop reading. Both of the main characters had mysteries in their past that provided extra suspense in the addition to the main plot: Devon's missing memories that other people seemed to know too much abot, Chiamaka's all-too-present ones that her best friend kept denying. Really, there are so, so many awesome things about this book.

The resolution, however...

I just found it hard to believe that the entire school was on the Aces plot. I get that it was a necessary hyperbole to illustrate the main point of the story, and I do understand that for Black people in many parts of the world the hyperbole wasn't that far-fetched. Fiction doesn't have to depict only reality strictly as it is, it would be awfully boring otherwise. And thrillers, YA thrillers in particular, seldom thrive on depicting 100% plausible horrors that anyone can encounter: just look at stories like Pretty Little Liars. It's the nature of the genre, to take the point of tension and twist it further than reality.

And yet my suspension of disbelief buckled at trying to take it in: the entire school, all those kids, all those teens with the age-specific mood swings and such. It's always hard for me to believe in really vast conspiracies that rely so much on teenagers going along with the plan: I remember myself as a teen all too well, I guess. Really, most likely it was the execution; maybe if there were more hints planted pointing at all kinds of people, if there were things that may not be evident when you're right in the middle of them, but Devon could notice some weirdness in how people treat Chiamaka, and vise versa. As it was, the conspiracists seemed to give a flawless performance far beyond what I felt the majority of players should have been capable of, and that threw me off.

Still, despite my feelings about the big twist, I did enjoy the book a lot, and the epilogue was just such a good part. And the very last few lines—gasp! What a way to end this story. It was all honestly very cinematographic: very often, I could easily envision everything I was reading about as parts of some big motion picture playing on a huge screen. Who knows, maybe one day this book is going to land a movie deal—I bet it would make a great movie.

Content Warnings