review; ace of shades

Ace Of Shades
by Amanda Foody

Welcome to the City of Sin, where casino families reign, gangs infest the streets…
and secrets hide in every shadow.

Enne Salta was raised as a proper young lady, and no lady would willingly visit New Reynes, the so-called City of Sin. But when her mother goes missing, Enne must leave her finishing school – and her reputation – behind to follow her mother’s trail to the city where no one survives uncorrupted.

Frightened and alone, her only lead is a name: Levi Glaisyer. Unfortunately, Levi is not the gentleman she expected – he’s a street lord and a con man. Levi is also only one payment away from cleaning up a rapidly unraveling investment scam, so he doesn’t have time to investigate a woman leading a dangerous double life. Enne’s offer of compensation, however, could be the solution to all his problems.

Their search for clues leads them through glamorous casinos, illicit cabarets and into the clutches of a ruthless mafia donna. As Enne unearths an impossible secret about her past, Levi’s enemies catch up to them, ensnaring him in a vicious execution game where the players always lose. To save him, Enne will need to surrender herself to the city…

And she’ll need to play.

Review:

This review might seem a little bit messy, but that’s because I’m a little out of practice.

I’ve heard quite a bit about this book from a few friends, and quite a number of reviews online compare it to Six Of Crows. Sometimes favourably, sometimes not. The fact that I have yet to read Six Of Crows is probably a good thing then, because I could go in with no biases.

Let’s start with the writing style before I go in to the plot.

It was engaging and entertaining, and it kept me turning pages. I never once felt that a piece of information was dry or info-dumped. Did it sometimes get to be too much info to retain? A little bit, yeah, but nothing felt out of place, so I kept going.

There were honestly so many places I wanted to pause and note down quotes because they were just THAT GOOD, but I also didn’t want to pause my momentum because I needed to know what happened next, so I kept going. Let me tell you, my re-read is going to happen soon, and it’s going to result in a whole bunch of post-its all over the pages.

This book is just so well-written.

The concept of magic and talent being inherited from family lines was SO FASCINATING? Just, the idea that the different family lines had different talents, but then there were different degrees of talents in the different families with same talents – it was unique and something so different, and I hope we get to understand it more in the sequel. Though, because of how much information we got about this and especially Enne’s thoughts on her own talent, I predicted one twist before it happened.

Without spoiling, I will say that the fact that the twist I predicted happened before I was half-way through the book was a great idea, because it gave the protagonist so much more depth. I mean, she was a fully-formed character before that, but it raised the stakes.

And the fact that she didn’t keep it from the other characters! So many books would have had the characters continuously lie to each other, and keep secrets “for their safety”, but this one had me seeing them learn to trust one another, and take leaps of faith based on that trust, and it was great.

The characters themselves were well-written. I’m going to take about the main two, mostly.

Enne could have been a really whiny character, but constantly seeing her from her own point of view – her acknowledging her flaws and clinging to her before-life so tightly – made me appreciate her. She was real, and broken, and trying desperately to save herself from drowning, even as she knew it was futile. She was strong in many ways, and naive in many, and I loved her for it.

Levi, my beautiful bisexual black boy, had my heart shredding itself in my chest. This boy, who wanted to be someone, who wanted to help the kids in his gang, but was caught in something bigger than him through no fault of his own. This boy, who found himself constantly on the losing end, but kept playing in the hopes of it getting better. This boy deserved better, and I hope he gets what he wants in the sequels.

Honestly, I loved this book so much and my only disappointment was that I didn’t know it was the first book in a series going in, and now I have to wait till 2019 for the sequel.