Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - Ace of Spades

Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

130 reviews

modernthymes's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I was going to give this a 3.5 but the last 50-100 pages was so thrilling and the ending was great.

Content Warnings

mkelly's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

this book is fucking chilling. an incredible and difficult read but so worth it. would rate higher than 5 stars if i could. cannot wait to read what àbíké-íyímídé writes next

Content Warnings

micaelamariem's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I have been so busy but I finally finished my second read of the month! I just read Ace of Spades by Faridah Abike-Iyimide, a book published by Square Fish, an imprint of Macmillan. This book has been on my radar for a couple of years--I didn't know much about it other than it was dark academia and had BIPOC and Queer representation. I didn't need more information than that to decide I wanted to read it.

I'm so glad I finally did read it. What blows my mind is that the author, Faridah Abike-Iyimide is younger than me and was eighteen when she started writing this book. As an aspiring author, I'm both jealous and in awe. She's a British novelist who just graduated with her BA in English Literature and is now pursuing a Master's in Shakespeare Studies.

Ace of Spadesis a young adult thriller branded as "Get Out" meets "Gossip Girl" but personally, I felt like it was more "Pretty Little Liars." The novel jumps between two perspectives: Chiamaka, a Blair-Waldorf-Wannabe who wants to do anything to stay on top; and Devon, a young man who wants to stay under the radar until he gets into Juliard. In their senior year, anonymous message blasts start delving out secrets these two are hiding and publicly humiliating them. For some reason, these blasts are only targeting Chi and Von, the only two Black students at their high school. They need to get to the bottom of this before reputations are ruined...or worse.

For the most part, I thought this was a brilliant book! As aforementioned, I am in awe that the author was so young when she wrote it--but perhaps that's just because when I was eighteen, I was still in my angsty poetry phase. I thought the writing style really worked for this type of book and really captured the contrasts between Chiamaka's and Devon's personalities. While I didn't necessarily like Chi at first (she seemed spoiled and arrogant and unlikable), she definitley grew on me over time.

Processed with VSCO with m5 preset

The mystery in itself was thrilling too. As someone who is not usually into mysteries, I knew it was good when I was starting to tally my own suspects for who could be behind the blasts.

My one dislike of the book was the ending. That seems too vague--I'm trying not to give any spoilers away, but to put it a bit more specifically, it felt to me like there was too much unsolved. Maybe that is part of the point, the more I think about it, though. Maybe the author is trying to say that systemic issues can't be fixed overnight (which is a big theme of the book) but we need to do all we can to fix the system. Progress is slow, but we shouldn't stop moving forward. Still, I wish I could understand how we got from the last chapter to the epilogue.

Overall, I'd give the book four stars--would've been five if the ending was more satisfying to me, but it may be to others! I highly recommend this book.

That being said, there are a few content warnings! This book may be hard to read for some people as there are graphic descriptions of violence, racism, hints of sexual assault, bullying, classism, a portrayal of post-traumatic anxiety, and hints of murder.

If you're still interested in reading the book, try also checking the author out on Instagram here.

Content Warnings

sproutreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Wow. I really enjoyed this! It was fear and anxiety inducing, like a thriller should be!

Ace of Spades is the story of Chiamaka and Devon, the only two Black students at an almost all white prestigious high school in America. Someone named Aces stars revealing the two student's secrets and more to the whole school. Aces is out to get Devon and Chiamaka, but who are they? and why?

My only complaint was that the "WHO DID IT?" was spoiled for me thanks to the marketing team and book listing on Amazon! I went to buy this book from Amazon (as it was on sale) and the synopsis on their website spoiled the big reveal for me.

I sometimes hate when the synopsis says, "this novel is X show and Y book/movie put together!", because there's either hardly a comparison or it's spot on and then the story is no longer a surprise. In this case, the examples were the film "Get Out" and the show "Gossip Girl". The comparisons were spot on and because of that, there were few surprises left to figure out on my own.

Overall, I really liked this novel, I'm giving this 4.5 stars out of 5, I'm knocking off .5 stars because I guessed some of the ending on my own. I'm also knocking a star off because Chiamaka was a jerk and unpleasant, and half the book was from her point of view so I couldn't avoid her annoying personality.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I listened to this for free on libbyapp.com

Content Warnings

sabrinas's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

Content Warnings

riverlasol's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

oh my goodness. how do i pull my thoughts together into a coherent review? this book was a WILD RIDE. I admit I saw a few of the twists coming but others completely blew me away and either way I know this for sure—this author is an extremely talented writer with a knack for foreshadowing, which is always wonderful in a thriller like this. This book hooked me from the first page—and not because of the mystery, though of course I wanted to know what happened—but both the main characters were interesting individuals, people who had so much conflict and complexity in their lives even outside of the mystery itself. I always find myself disappointed when thrillers are too much about the plot and not about the people and this book was not falling into that problem at all. I was rooting for these characters from the beginning and truly appreciated how we got a full picture of their lives. This book also was, I thought, a beautiful depiction of the intersection of queerness and blackness.
Now…the emotional impact. This book was horrifying, not just because of the terrifying concept, but because everything the writer did made it feel so real. like this could literally have been a news story on tv.
this was a complex, gripping thriller but also at its core a story about two people fighting to be empowered in a system that wants them to be powerless. i don’t want to go into spoiler territory so i’ll end this review here. i cannot recommend it enough and please check content warnings beforehand if you read it!

Content Warnings

wekindasad's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This book was everything. It made me so passionate and reignited me after a huge reading slump. I have no words. I was extremely emotionally invested. This was an incredible read.

Content Warnings

hannah_book's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

bookishchef's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Damn, this kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.

I read the Get Out comparison and somehow I still didn't expect ALL of the white people to be in on it.
I kept assuming it was either Jamie, Jack or Belle (in that order from most likely to least). So when the answer turned out to be "yes, and also all of the other characters", I was shook.

I really enjoyed the ride though, even though I thought the final plottwist

(with the news outlet being evil and the school going up in flames)

was a tad predictable.

The entire time while Terell and Chiamaka were chatting about breaking the story to the news, I was very sceptical. It felt so dumb? Especially after all they'd been through and the Belle revealing there were way more people in on it.

There are also still some things that puzzle me:

1. Was Scotty in on it too? If so, he's a damn good actor if he convinced both Devon and Chiamaka that he didn't do it. His storyline got dropped halfway through the book so we never really got a resolution there.

2. What happened to Belle? She told Chiamaka what was happening and I don't assume that her family took kindly to that.

3. How did Devon end up the way he did? We get a little bit of an answer to that in the prologue, which shows that he's living with Terell and his mother but... How? He obviously wasn't getting into Juilliard and he dropped out. Yet the epilogue letter calls him "professor". So what did he do? How did he manage?

4. What happened to Andre? Is he still serving time? Am I not supposed to care?

5. Why did Devon's mom hide his father's death from him? It is said in the epilogue that Devon and his mother weren't on speaking terms for a while after he confronted her... And then what? How did that conversation go? This subplot feels unfinished now.

6. Was Peter the Hacker in on it too? If so, why did he help Chiamaka by revealing what pc the messages were send from? Why did he ask her to put in a good word for him with Belle if he knew Belle's family was in on it too?
And if he wasn't in on it, how did Aces expect the black students to not (accidentally) ask one of the students that wasn't in Aces for help?

I also have a minor headcanon/conspiracy:

We're told by a news anchor that the fire that burns down Niveus was caused by electrical issues. Which seems fair because those issues were mentioned many times before.
Only I thought those issues were just Aces manipulating the cameras, etc. With how it was set up, I assumed Jamie burned down the library. He was set up as a pyromaniac early on, and then threatened Chiamaka with his lighter. So, when she left him, angry and alone, in the library with his lighter, I assumed he was the cause of the fire.

Which he may still have been. After all, the book tells the reader many times that the media covers up white crimes all the time. But Jamie, according to the news broadcast, died in the fire. So that would mean he burned down the school without giving himself an escape? Or was he really that upset about being attracted to/friends with a black girl? I guess we'll never know. So, headcanon land it is.

Content Warnings

More...