Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-ÍyímídéMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've been keeping an eye out for this book for a while for a lot of reasons - the title, the amazing cover, the promise of a Gossip Girl-Get Out mashup...and while I've never seen a single episode of Gossip Girl (and still don't think I ever will), any comparison to Jordan Peele's horrifying masterworks is an automatic YES as far as I'm concerned.
Deliberately set in an ambiguously Anglosphere country - Àbíké-Íyímídé includes subtle references to American and British culture both at once, to underline the point that most of the Western world suffers from the same pervasive issues prevalent throughout this novel - the story is split between the POVs of Devon and Chiamaka, the only two Black students at the exclusive Niveus Academy, whose stars are really rising going into their senior year. That is, until a gossip-mongering troll starts putting their private lives on blast, exposing intimate moments (particularly triggering for Devon, who's gay and pretty well closeted both at school and at home) and some awful truths they'd rather forget (particularly for Chiamaka, whose storyline comes off a bit 90s horror at times, taking strong influence from I Know What You Did Last Summer if you get my drift...)
Eventually, they manage to figure out what's really going on, and while the major twists are also pretty predictable to Jordan Peele fans, they're no less shocking and gut-punching for it - and, even better, it plays out even more subtly speculative than either of Peele's films to date, giving its thrills a more dangerously realistic edge. But the real surprise is how un-Peele-like the ending is, and I'm pretty sure it's not very Gossip Girl -like either. Àbíké-Íyímídé, though, sure wants to propose a hopeful world where those who would carry out the kind of bigoted attacks ascribed to Aces - and those who would abet them - suffer the punishment they deserve.
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