I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

All you need to know is . . . I’m here to divide and conquer. Like all great tyrants do. —Aces

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?

Short and Sweet Review

Devon and Chiamaka attend Niveus Private Academy, where they both happen to be the only black students that attend. It’s their senior year and they’re both made prefects which will look pretty good on their college applications, but when Aces an anonymous person starts sending out texts about Chiamaka and Devon to the whole school it begins to flip their world upside down. Aces is revealing all of their secrets and is showing them that they’re willing to cross the line. Chiamaka and Devon have to work together to stop whoever Aces is before things get deadly.

Ace of Spades was a good book. I thought the pacing was a bit slow and I was invested mainly because I wanted to know who Aces was. Our main characters are Devon and Chiamaka are the only black students who attend Niveus but they don’t hang out in the same circles. Devon isn’t wealthy and he helps his mom make ends meet by selling drugs. Chiamaka on the other hand is wealthy and she likes to show it off. We get both characters POVs I wasn’t invested in one over the other I’m really not sure if I liked either of them. They both had a lot of depth to them but their problem solving abilities were lacking. It took awhile before the characters start to work together. Chiamaka is the more dominant of the two but Devon was around to bring her back to reality if she got too close to the sun. We also see our main characters have some romance in their lives but not between each other. The investigation into who Aces could be was pretty interesting and even though there were suspects its really hard to know what’s going on and also its a lot larger than one person.

Overall, I liked this book, it was engaging but I felt like the pacing was slow and the only thing keeping me hooked was solving a mystery.