ace of spades by faridah abike-iyimide

Ace of Spades by Faridah Abike-Iyimide – Thoughts

Devon and Chiamaka are two of Niveus Private Academy’s new prefects. But almost as soon as it seems that senior year is going to be both of their years and both Devon and Chiamaka are in the competition to be graduating valedictorian, an anonymous number sending out info about their personal lives may change senior year plans.

This was really good – I binged it as much as I could while I was super busy. But the intensity of the story gave me so much desire to push the limits of how much sleep I needed.

“I think about how nice it is to have someone who doesn’t treat me like a burden.”
Faridah Abike-Iyimide, Ace of Spades

The above quote just broke my heart. Whoever has felt like a burden around others in real life needs a big hug (but if you’re reading this and you’ve felt like a burden, I’m giving you a virtual hug).

“I don’t have to be a good friend to someone who isn’t one to me.”
Faridah Abike-Iyimide, Ace of Spades

I felt this statement to my core. It reminded me of a friend I had had in college who I struggled with keeping as a friend. It had felt that she used her diagnosis of bipolar disorder to sometimes treat me poorly. And I remember the day it hit me that I decided that I wouldn’t let her use her mental illness as an excuse to treat me improperly.

“I want to tell him that people like him, boys with white skin, they never work twice as hard. Boys like him don’t have to carry the weight of generations and generations of hate and discrimination.”
Faridah Abike-Iyimide, Ace of Spades

As I’ve heard other people begin to discuss, pushing these kinds of thoughts onto children teaches them at a young age that their skin color does matter. When it comes to hard work, that can’t be measured on skin color. And if someone is basing hard work and any other qualities of a person based off of their skin color, they’re racist, even if they politically lean to the left.

A little note aside from the review

I’ll probably have to do many shorter reviews [than I normally publish] seeing that my life has gotten significantly busier. And it’s just going to stay busy and then get busier. So if you’re here for the well-written reviews that I publish *eye roll*, you might be missing some for a while. But let me say that I also so so appreciate everyone subscribed because publishing me thoughts on books was terrifying when I first started doing this (and sometimes still scary).

Even though I do talk about doing as much as possible all the time and pushing your limits, I am aware that realistically there’s not enough time in a day to do everything that I’d like to do. As priorities shift, some hobbies have to go on the back burner for some time.

Read on and keep thinking.

Alessandra is reading…