Loved the second half, mostly, but there's a lot of flaws with this book.

The first half is very slow, and very much reads like some high school drama in which most of the students shouldn't even care about what's going on. The second half certainly picks up a fair amount with conspiracies and a bit more than just a racist person happening. It's a little fantastical - there's no way racists could be this organised and subtle - but it does make for an interesting read. I do however wish we got to see more of the story after the ending, since it doesn't make too much sense tbh with what little we get told there. The story is also pretty predictable? Aces themselves and all of that isn't too predictable, but people's motives generally are. You'll think a few times "this won't be that, that's too obvious!" but it will be.

While having 2 pretty contrasting PoVs was interesting, Chiamaka's chapters were really bad to read. She's incredibly unlikable, and even at the big end she was looking down at Devon and not even being that helpful. She constantly talked down to people, used her status and class to rule over others and was, in general, an asshole. There's a line from her about how like, if men know what they want they're seen as strong, if women do then they're seen as egoistical. And while yea that is unfortunately true, Chiamaka is also just egotistical and incredibly elitist. Devon though, I really liked! I quite liked his journey, his way of thinking, how much he cared about his family and others. I really wanted to see a bit more of his family dynamic in the end, there were a few questions raised that never actually got answered in the end about his family and relationships.

At the front of my book was a class timetable for both Devon and Chiamaka, which at first was really cool and I read it carefully before starting. Only to realise by the end that it was completely, entirely, useless 😅 Both of them barely go to classes, and when they do knowing their timetable kinda just doesn't really matter? The start of each chapter has the day, so you don't need it to know that. There's no like secret crossovers in their timetable that you'd only pick up on with knowledge of their timetables.. I'm just very confused on why they were seemingly added in later editions of the book. Usually that kinda thing is done to clear up common misconceptions or issues that were brought up in the first editions. But here, I genuinely don't see a purpose for them. They're neat! But yeah, no purpose.

I did like how Aces was done. It is most certainly like, out there, and has a decent amount of depth there. I wish we got some more context and history to things though, and how it all works connected together. There was some stuff said at the end about the history which honestly didn't make too much sense/wasn't properly explained but eh. Tbh the most unrealistic part is how incredibly cunning, smart and insanely well co-ordinated the racists are in this. But they also don't seem to care about queers (or disabled people)? They're.. kinda ok with queers I guess? There is homophobia in the book but it doesn't really come across from the conspiracy racists, it's mainly internalised/from family/outside the school.

I think a lot of this is a debut learning as they go however, since I loved Where Sleeping Girls Lie a lot more. Maybe that book also upped my expectations for this one a bit too much?

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Representations: https://trello.com/c/DxOnOcXG

Short and Snappy but a very well constructed dialogue! The entire novella is written as a dialogue, the only words are spoken ones. It managed to stay pretty realistic and flowed surprisingly well. Things did feel slightly off, but that's intentional due to the setting and what's going on.

There are few characters, the 2 in dialogue are the main character and the owner of the hotel/only employee/bell boy. The rest are through the story told, only 2 others being prominent - The wife, and the neighbour in the motel. Honestly really liked how the characters were written. In such short time you got to know them all quite well. Saying much about any of them will certainly spoil too much however.

The story was quite interesting, and while it was very slow at first, since it's a novella that didn't last too long. By the time it felt like it was starting to drag it was already like halfway through and started to pick up haha. It does get pretty bleak and tense, and towards the end it does get kinda depressing (content warning spoiler at the bottom, this is a book that needs it), but it handles it pretty alright? I think because it's a novella and because it cannot linger on scenes too long it's mostly alright in what it does near the end. The ending itself though, while it was good it did mostly leave me feeling a bit confused? I'm not entirely sure what the ending was, but that could just be me being dumb. I understand what happened, but not really what happens next if that makes sense, or why things had to go the way they did.

Minor spoilers but content warnings below:

Content warning for on-page suicide and animal (pet, essentially) death.