Ace of Spades
By: Farida Abrike-Iyimide
Published Year: 2021
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Pages: 432
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): When two Niveus Private Academy students, Devon Richards and Chiamaka Adebayo, are selected to be part of the elite school’s senior class prefects, it looks like their year is off to an amazing start. After all, not only does it look great on college applications, but it officially puts each of them in the running for valedictorian, too.
Shortly after the announcement is made, though, someone who goes by Aces begins using anonymous text messages to reveal secrets about the two of them that turn their lives upside down and threaten every aspect of their carefully planned futures.
As Aces shows no sign of stopping, what seemed like a sick prank quickly turns into a dangerous game, with all the cards stacked against them. Can Devon and Chiamaka stop Aces before things become incredibly deadly?
With heart-pounding suspense and relevant social commentary comes a high-octane thriller from debut author Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé.
First Impressions
The cover of this book caught my eye on Twitter. Someone had retweeted the author when she tweeted her cover reveal and I immediately had to check it out. The summary said that it was a mix between Get Out and Gossip Girl which sounded very intriguing. It jumped right to the top of my 2021 release list.
What I thought
I don’t know why I keep gravitating towards these Get Out type stories when all they do is give me anxiety!
Chiamaka and Devon are the only two black students at their private school, Niveus Academy. Their senior year Chiamaka is designated as Head Prefect, which she’s been working towards the past 3 years, and Devon is awarded Senior Prefect, completely out of the view. When the school starts to be harassed by an anonymous “Aces”, Chi and Devon are the targets. Everything they’ve worked towards starts to crumble around them as they try to find out why this is happening and who is behind it.
I was definitely sucked in at the beginning when everything started to go down. Devon and Chiamaka run in two completely different circles, so trying to figure out the commonalities was fun. I appreciated that they were two well fleshed out characters. The both had a lot going on outside of who they appear to be on the surface.
I was able to figure out pretty early on who was Aces, so the mystery part started lacking for me in the middle. I was still intrigued, but I didn’t find myself completely sucked in and unable to put the book down. Once Chi and Devon started to figure it out, the book picked back up again and I flew through the last 100 pages wanting to see how it all played out.
Without giving anything away, I think this book does tackle some very important and current issues with race, education, and privilege. The book tackles the struggles that Chi and Devon deal with being the only two black students in an all white private school; such as Chi struggling with her identity as a black woman and Devon as a poor black man. I did find myself slightly irritated that neither Chi nor Devon thought to immediately involve their parents once stuff started happening but there were legitimate reasons that I was able to accept.
This book was definitely more of a 3.5 stars for me. I wanted to like it more and expected to be more sucked in than I actually was. The story and the writing were solid and I liked the character development. If you can handle the anxiety of a mystery where a lot is at stake then I recommend it. Having read two “Get Out” inspired novels, this one is more realistic and doesn’t have any magical elements, unlike The Other Black Girl. So, if you want to read something along those lines, you can use that to make your decision.