Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

e-Audio, 13:49:19
Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge & Tapiwa Mugweni 
Release Date: June 1, 2021
Published by: Macmillan Audio
Read from: July 6-8, 2021
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley (I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: Racism
For Readers Interested In: Contemporary, Thriller, Dark Academia, Mystery, LGBTQ+, Multiple POVs, YA

    Gossip Girl meets Get Out in Ace of Spades, a YA contemporary thriller by debut author Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé about two students, Devon & Chiamaka, and their struggles against an anonymous bully.
     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.

*MY THOUGHTS*

This thriller was completely different from any one I’ve ever read before. I was NOT expecting anything like this book, the events that happened in this book at all! And that’s part of the reason I enjoyed so much.

It’s senior year and Devon & Chiamaka have joined the ranks of their school’s prefects. But soon after the year has started, an anonymous bully named Aces has started terrorizing the two students. They start trying to figure out why these things have been happening to them and even accuse each other. At first they can’t figure it out, but once things start falling into place, they realize this is way bigger than anything they expected.

I LOVED this. Normally when I see things that describe the book as something I like or something that sounds super out there. So when I saw that this was Get Out and Gossip Girl I was not exactly going into it with an open mind. But man, that’s EXACTLY what it was. And man, it was GOOD. I want to explain why, but SPOILERS.

Also, I think I may have been reading (no pun intended) too much into this, but man, the symbolism in this book is A1. [SPOILERS!] The events that take place at the end were symbolic of all the people that are hiding in plain sight that are just like those in this book. Whether its your peers or those who are above or below you. [END SPOILER] It really brought to life those real life situations that people of color encounter all the time. I thought it was really creative how Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé wrote it.

The characters weren’t my favorite tho. I liked Devon, but Chaimaka was so oblivious. Maybe she was supposed to be written like that, but whatever the reason, I was not impressed. She was supposed to be in the running for valedictorian? I get she was going through some things, but geez, that should have at least listened more. As for everyone else, literally everyone else in this book was trash lol Like I’m laughing but I’m not even kidding. There were some that had no choice but to be trash, but for the most part, all the others didn’t care and were just trash in general. And I hated them lol

The mystery itself was why I didn’t give this 5 stars. It had the potential to be “thrilling,” but it just wasn’t. I don’t really know if that makes sense lol But I just couldn’t really feel that it was scary. It was 1000% the Gossip Girl vibes, you know where everyone was talking about each other? But I guess I wanted more Get Out lol Don’t get me wrong, the vibes from the mystery weren’t bad, but I didn’t feel like it gave its full potential.

This book had a lot of surprises and some interesting symbols and I really enjoyed it. I have seen this floating around on #BookTok and #Bookstagram, and I can finally answer for myself, to me this was indeed worth the hype.

Overall, I give this

Have you read this? Am I thinking too much into it? Let me know what you think in the comments!