Ace of Spades

This books gave me Gossip Girl vibes! But think Gossip Girl with more bullying, more danger and a lot of racism and homophobia. 
At first, I didn't like Chiamaka. She acted like she was the Queen, which she wanted to be in a way. The Queen of the school. She'd do anything to get at the top. But she is one of the two only Black students at this private school. Wheras her parents can afford the school, Devon, the other Black student, is on a scholarship. He is quite, has only one friend at school and is only comfortable when he can play the piano (or keyboard). 
Up until their senior year there was no problem with racism. But suddenly, everything changes for Chiamaka and Devon. 
It reminded me a bit of the messages in Gossip Girl and the things Blair did to get what she wants (or all the other rich kids from Gossip Girl). But Gossip Girl is lowkey dangerous. Aces, the anonymous sender in Ace of Spades, is more cruel. 
I'd love to rate this book 5 stars. It was really good and tense. But I felt like there was something missing at the end. What happened with Belle? Were there any consequences for the school? Why was Devons father in prison? <spoiler>and why was he on death row?</spoiler>
I can totally see this book turned into a movie or series. 

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... <spoiler>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.</spoiler>

<spoiler>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.</spoiler>
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. 

ACE OF SPADES is a dark academia thriller thriller where two high-achieving students suddenly have everything they thought they knew come crashing down after a mysterious texter begins revealing their secrets one by one. 

The pacing is amazing, starting out with hints, whispers, and strange inconsistencies before building into series of much-needed confrontations and gripping turns. The eventual reveal of Aces' identity is narratively satisfying, immediately begging for a re-read once the solution is known. This is a thriller which can absolutely survive that re-read, but this review won't spoil the ending. The alternating perspectives kept things moving, and contributed to the sense of missing information as often events would happen where the other main character would get information and the current point of view character would just get rumors or partial glimpses. 

I love Chi and Devon as protagonists, especially the way they interact with (or, early on, avoid) each other. They're very different people who end up having to work together to figure out what's been happening to both of them. They have a lot of time on their own, trying to deal with everything. 

The secondary characters are complex without taking over the narrative. Their parents and other figures from home have enough attention to feel like real parts of their worlds while not not being the focus. 

This is a thriller with much needed aftercare in the form of updates after the main events. It's just enough to give closure and a sense of where they end up, and it works really well. This is a hell of a debut, I wish there were something else I could read right away because this is just fantastic. 

The way different slices of their lives and identities were used to torment them and which parts Aces carefully danced around was very well handled. <spoiler>Because Aces' plan relied on tormenting Chi and Devon for their existence as Black people, but they also didn't want to reveal that that was the reason, they attacked them for everything but that. Everything from outing one of them for being queer, to making them doubt their memories of past events, even the confusion and fear from making sure the target of each particular text was the only one to miss the message each time. All of it came together to make them even doubt that racism was the reason for the bewildering and never-ending harassment. Aces (and the narrative as a whole) used the tension inherent in it being very obvious to an outside observer that race is a motivation when the only two Black kids are the targets of the bullying, but the Black protagonists immersed in their very white school felt like if they said Aces was racist then they would be wrong somehow for pointing out this possibility. It's a facet of how white supremacy upholds itself that it treats the people who call out racism as being as bad (or worse) than the people actually being racist, a point which is made explicitly in the book. The intersection of Blackness and queerness then was used for additional torments, because while both were loathsome to Aces, only one (queerness) was treated like an okay aspect to openly hate. It shows how neither kind of marginalized identity was safe from Aces and their hatred of these characters. </spoiler>

There's a series of final confrontations which I loved but can't say much about without major spoilers. Some of them ramped up the existing tension and some were more emotionally complex where catharsis was sought and not received, or where a confrontation was expected and then didn't go the way they thought.