Ace of Spades

Probably closer to 3.5/5 for me. This was a pretty entertaining high school mystery-thriller that is occasionally a little hard to read with the hard-hitting social commentary that it includes. It touches upon the injustices of being Black in many Western countries around the world, but specifically America in this book, while also appealing to a YA demographic with a touch of Gossip Girl in the mix.

Chiamaka Adebayo is the Queen Bee of her high school, the prestigious Niveus Academy, and she's worked hard to get there, hoping to continue on her perfect life to Yale and then med school. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have social outcast Devon Richards from a single-parent family struggling to make ends meet and only affording his tuition fees at Niveus on scholarship, hoping to make it to Julliard one day with his talent with music. Despite having nothing socially in common, Chiamaka and Devon are inexplicably targeted by Aces, an anonymous cyber-bully spreading malicious gossip about them shortly after school begins, but then things start coming to light that are more dangerous secrets than just mere gossip.

From the beginning, I thought Chiamaka's chapters were easier to get into but also more annoying to read especially since it's contrasted with Devon's chapters. Chi's problems stem mainly from how to be the best and most powerful Mean Girl in school, and being very cognizant of the social hierarchies that she actively climbs in order to get to her present position. But these chapters are interspersed with those from Devon's perspective, where we see him dealing with loneliness, ostracism, keeping his homosexuality in the closet at home, the vicious cycle of poverty and lack of opportunities that he's trying desperately to break out of even if it means having to suck up being in a school he absolutely hates, and how the system forces people like him into crime and prisons. His chapters are harder and more unpleasant to read, and also make Chi's chapters sound really frivolous and silly. I'm not sure if this was the author's intention though.

The book also felt a little draggy in the middle. There's not a wealth of secrets or plot twists in the middle, so the whole process of events unfolding for Chiamaka and Devon inevitably felt rather slow. Even when the anonymous Aces releases another piece of news, we pretty much already know what are Chi and Devon's secrets already so there's a lack of tension there.

The ending was unexpected and pretty interesting, though I would say a bit flawed and absolute. I'm not mad at the way it ended though and do think there's a lot of real-life validity in how Àbíké-Íyímídé decided to wrap up the story than how it may initially appear. Spoilery thoughts: I'm not sure if I liked the plot twist about Aces being not just one person but the whole school, but I guess it was a pretty acceptable way for things to go. If it had just been one person, it would've undermined Àbíké-Íyímídé's message that Black students aren't being just targeted by one specific person but in fact by the whole system that they live in. It was a rather heavy-handed way of conveying that message IMO and also runs a high risk of overgeneralization, where people (especially younger audiences) may fall into the trap of painting entire groups of people with the same brush, but I do think the message itself is valid. There're a lot of things that had the dramatic factor dialed up to eleven for entertainment purposes, like the school values lining up to make an acrostic message, or having the masked person turning out to be Belle's sister who Chiamaka had “run over” beforehand when presumably she doesn't attend the school so why would she be the one running the errand? And also Belle adding Chi to her Facebook but Martha not thinking that Chi would see her profile when she commented on Belle's photo? I mean, the whole idea of a school banding together to specifically target 2 Black students every decade just sounds super over the top (although I guess sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, so who knows if this might be a possibility?).

This was entertaining enough though, and I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a YA high school mystery-thriller.