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bookcheshirecat's review against another edition
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
4.0
“It felt like a puzzle, mostly put together but with a piece missing, waiting to be filled. There were plenty of pieces to fill it- gay, straight, bisexual- but none fit quite right. Sometimes I thought I could make one fit if I pressed hard enough, but it would never lie flat. The word asexual took the puzzle piece and turned it, letting it click into place where before it'd been better to just leave the space empty. I wasn't broken. I wasn't empty. I wasn't nothing at all. Just a little differently shaped.”
Thank you to Netgalley and Peachtree Teen for providing me with a digital copy in exchange for an honest review! The quotes are taken from the Arc and are subject to changes!
Aces Wilde was such a fun time! After loving Wren Martin Ruins It All, I was hyped to finally read the eArc of the author's debut, which I still had sitting on my Kindle. The story follows Jack, who hopes to save his arrested mother by taking down her biggest rival Peter Carlevaro who wants a monopoly on the Las Vegas strip. Desperate to do something, Jack enlists the help of his all-ace online friend group to plan a heist that'll take down Carlevaro. I loved the premise of an all-ace cast attempting a daring heist in Las Vegas! I've never been to Las Vegas, but the author described the setting in such a vivid way that it felt like if I was there. Jack's family business isn't exactly ... legal (apart from owning a hotel and casino, his mother was involved in criminal activity) but he's still proud of it and the sibling most invested in its success!
Jack's snarky narrative was such a delight. He's not good with expressing his emotions, but great at witty commentary. Back in his fancy boarding school, he didn't exactly have friends, and he ran an underground gambling club as a talented card player. I loved the complicated relationship with his family. He admires his mother and wants to follow in her footsteps, but she was always too busy to pay closer attention to him. His father is too chaotic and laid-back to be a proper parental figure, so it is up to Jack's oldest sister Beth to take care of everything. She doesn't want anything to do with the family business and tries to mother Jack even though he isn't thrilled. The middle sister K is less intense, but they don't see each other long enough to truly build a close relationship. Jack is a pretty flawed character, but he's so easy to root for, as he genuinely cares about what happens to their family legacy and even manages to ask his online friends for help with it! The writing style was so funny, so I flew through this book!
“Just don't look so hard toward the future that you forget the people you want in it.”
I also loved the online friendships! Jack's not exactly out as ace, but he's managed to find a group of ace friends online that he can relate to. They haven't met in person prior to this book, but he texts them almost every day and they're his biggest support network. I love how online friendships were celebrated and the book showed the awkwardness of meeting in person for the first time. The banter between Jack, Remy, Georgia, Lucky & Gabe was great! It was lovely seeing them connect via their shared identity (though there are differences in how they identify, e.g. Gabe is aroace, Remy is nonbinary and Jack is romantic ace) and support each other as asexuality is still not well known and understood by others. I wish Jack's friends had been a bit more developed, as apart from Lucky, they didn't stand out much! The pining between Remy and Jack was sweet but could have been better if Remy was more fleshed out. It also would have been great to explore the differences in their ace experiences by digging deeper into everyone's character!
I also have to admit that the actual heist wasn't as high-stakes and intense! Since I loved Jack's narrative and his dynamic with his friends, I didn't really mind it. However, I feel like I went into this book with the expectation that the crew would pull off an actual heist. Instead, Jack and his friends mostly run reconnaissance and try to solve the mystery of the Avalon Club. Things only heat up at the very end of the book!
“Just because you didn't experience sexual attraction didn't mean you didn't you didn't experience romantic feelings. But those romantic feelings didn't look like they did in the movies because, well, Hollywood didn't make movies about ace people. Period. So they could be a little hard to figure out.”
Content Warnings
Minor: Confinement, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Abandonment