The story of how one teenagers life gets turned upside down and how his group of friends helps him along the way. Well written young adult novel.

This was a fun read but I found it largely forgettable. I finished it last night and I don't think I could tell you much about what happened from memory.

First and foremost such a good asexual rep ya novel. I loved that aspect. However I wanted more when it came to the characters they didn’t seems fully developed and I had a hard time getting over the fact that they were 16 trying to heist in casinos in Vegas. Overall a fun predictable read.

I enjoyed this book even if it wasn't exactly what I expected. I was expecting a lot more "heist" plot but the true story was in the characters and their wonderful found family. This is what hooked me and made me keep reading.

The story follows Jack, an asexual teen, who's mother ends up in Jail. In order to try and clear her name, Jack travels home to Las Vegas and invites his online friends to Vegas to help him. Together they try to infiltrate the rival hotel owner and learn his secrets to take him down and free jack's mom.

The story truly was in the characters, I really enjoyed that they all were teenagers and acted like it. They made a lot of poor choices, they didn't think things through and they often had to own up to those mistakes. Jack was a bit self centered but that's usually what teens are like. I do wish there was more heist in the plot but I still enjoyed it and would read another book by this author!

Overall, read the book if you enjoy found family and storylines focusing on the dramas of friendship and family and navigating those parts of life as a teen. do not expect the main plot to be about the heist. This reminded me a lot of the movie 21 but with more focus on the characters.

4.25*

I absolutely loved the boarding school setting, found family and all the queer rep, especially asexuality, this had. Makes me yearn having my own queer friend group so much. I think having Jack as the narrator and mc was a great choice, he is such a funny and relatable character. Also the humor in this book in general was really good and definitely made me enjoy it even more.
I won't lie, the stakes on this one didn't feel that high though which is why I woudn't exactly compare it to six of crows other than both had a kind of heist.
Still I would 100% reccomend this!

First off, thank you to Netgalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Secondly, I WANT TO SCREAM ABOUT THIS BOOK FROM EVERY SINGLE ROOFTOP BECAUSE OF HOW AMAZING IT IS!!

I'll start off by clearing up some misconceptions other reviewers have put in their reviews. It is not a story like Army of the Dead/Army of Thieves, it's a coming-of-age tale about a group of kids trying to find out what it means to be them, while being their clumsy, sarcastic, sassy, ace/aro selves while also trying to take down the head of the local organised crime. There are heists, and a lot of spy work, but it's a bunch of kids with no experience in this stuff. If you're wanting super sophisticated and well planned attacks, this aint it, but also I think that's what makes this better in a way.
There was also mentions about a deaf side character being written terribly, but as someone who's hard of hearing I personally don't think this to be the case. Siblings act like siblings, and not every deaf person is "stereotypically deaf". It'd have been nice to have it be more of a topic, but she's a small side character so I'd say it works in my honest opinion.

I love all the characters. I love just how honestly clumsy and young everyone is. Trying to shoulder so much trauma without knowing who you are fully must absolutely suck. No one's perfect, but no one's absolutely evil either. It's just the asexual support group and they know they've got each others backs no matter what.

I loved every moment of this book. I loved how it showed asexuality was complicated, a spectrum, and everyone under the umbrella is different. I loved how it didn't try and be a fantasy, it was just kids trying to be adults, but realising they're still just kids in the end.

Buddy read with Ishika and Ash 💖💖

Arc provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

☆彡 ☆ミ Synopsis

"My name is Jack Shannon, and this is not a love story. It’s a confession."

Jack Shannon son of a Las Vegas casino mogul runs a secret blackjack ring in his school’s basement. His mom gets arrested for their family’s ties to organized crime. Everyone knows his mom was sold out by Peter Carlevaro: rival casino owner ex-lover

"Peter Carlevaro were also not a love story, as much as Peter wanted to believe they were. She was a casino heiress, and he was a crime boss’s son, brought together by their fathers’ friendship. To Peter, the medieval idea of marrying the two families together was obvious. To Aileen, less so."

He recruits his group of asexual online friends he met through forums and together they will infiltrate Peter's casino while... easier said than done!


☆彡 ☆ミ Plot

"If anyone was going to fix this, it should be me. At least, I was the only person who seemed interested in doing anything besides damage control. Personally, I was a little more interested in doing some damage.

The plot ... it's not a heist and the Six of Crows comparison has no right being there (sorry). It's not what I would call a heist story. Most of the time, it felt like it wasn't taking itself seriously enough and it felt... shallow and mediocre at best. I also lost interest in the middle and was just there for the characters.

☆彡 ☆ミ Characters

"Call it Internet addiction or call it fate, but they had a knack for being online when I needed them to be."

THE MOST RELATABLE GROUP OF CHAOTIC ONLINE FRIEND GROUP OMG!! I feel so seen and represented by this friend group because of the queer reps, dynamics and dry humour!!

"[georgia]: he’s so acute
[jack]: guys don’t be obtuse
[remy]: no she’s . . . right . . . angle."

I happen to be lucky to have a very very similar online friend group to the one in here and all I can see is that we need so much more online friend representation in books to make jobless people like me feel less alone for talking to strangers on the internet and spilling our guts at them.

"My friends weren’t just my casual Internet acquaintances anymore. After a year, we’d definitely transitioned into spill-your-guts-at-three-in-the-morning friends"

They're so funny, entertaining, and diverse!! They even have inside jokes similar to mine I wonder if one of my online friends wrote this lol.

☆彡 ☆ミ Writing

"Risk and reward, I reminded myself. In this town, you didn’t have one without the other."

The writing felt very light (more than my taste for a heist book with criminal families) and it felt... kind of middle grade at points. But it was super funny a lot of the times.

☆彡 ☆ミ Conclusion
❌Plot
✔️Characters
🆗✔️Writing

--------------------------------
Rating system
❌= I did not like it
🆗= It was ok, I have nothing against but it doesn't stand out
✔️ = It was great and I wouldn't change anything about it
❌🆗 = Somewhere between I did not like it and ok
🆗✔️= Somewhere between ok and great

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, Peachtree and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Fast paced and impossible to put down. Full of humor and delightful characters, an east story to navigate.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
When I first heard this book will have an aces friend group AND a heist? I was instantly sold. So I jumped at the chance to read it when I saw it was available on NetGalley.
The writing style and storytelling were so well done, they kept me hooked till the very end. I just couldn't stop reading this book. It was really engaging and captivating. There were also a lot of hilarious instances!
The themes addressed in the book of friendship, sibling dynamics as well as familial relationships were really well written and I enjoyed every aspect of these.
I loved the ace representation and the various romantic spectrum representation we got, and the non-binary rep! I just wish there was more to this than just the fact that they were all asexual. I realize that this wasn't an ace book per se but with an ace friend group I had expected there to be more on asexuality.
The characters did seem to be more like caricatures, especially the side characters except for maybe Remy. I don't feel like I know anything about the side characters except for what was supposed to be their personality traits, even with Remy most of the time.
Even though the storytelling is amazing, I think heist fans (especially Six of Crows fans) will be a bit disappointed on that front. I enjoyed everything but the heist didn't feel solid enough, which turned out to give the teenagers a more realistic view rather than the usual teenagers doing big things in spite of their age view, which I appreciated. It focuses more on the connections between the characters, their feelings, and what they're going through while keeping the heist part pretty simple for the readers.
Lastly, it was still an enjoyable book but definitely shouldn't be compared with Six of Crows just because both of these books have heists. Highly recommend it if you like books with an engaging writing style and a good plot.

This is a delightful book about an internet friend group of aces who team up to get Jack's, one guy from the group's, mother out of prison. She's a Las Vegas mogul and was put into prison by... a former friend.

The story was fun and easy to read. There were forth wall breaks. I wish the heist itself felt more nerve wracking - though Jack does worry about what would happen if he doesn't break his mum out of jail, the worst case scenario seems to be not that drastic, with his mom (who was definitely guilty of what she was charged with and was neglectful all his life) staying in prison and him living off of his trust fund. In the end, this was more of a family/friendship YA, rather than a heist one as I had expected and hoped for, but it was still fun and precious.

It would be a nice read for teenagers, especially if they're ace.

ACES WILD is an excellent and exciting read that will appeal to fans of contemporary novels as well as heist/thriller books. Aside from having one of the most brilliant moments in which the title is first mentioned in the book, it is a fun story with great representation and a perfect example of found family in a modern era.

One of the strongest points of the book is the voice. The writing style is smooth to read itself, but Jack has such a great sense of humor and way of seeing the world, and I was hooked from the first page. (If not sooner, as I am a sucker for books with fun chapter titles.) Overall, the characterization of the book is well-crafted. Jack is easy to root for, and while he makes mistakes and has his flaws, is still well-rounded and compelling. The other characters in his friend group each have their unique personalities and the relationships between them are sweet and a delight to read.

The asexual representation is especially wonderfully done, but the inclusion of other queer identities was wonderful as well!

Personally, as a fan of the heist genre and someone that lives for tropes, I would have liked the book to center more around the heist and lean into some of those tropes, as the actual plan for the heist didn't really seem to come together and be the central story of the book at all times. However, this didn't negatively impact my reading as it is something purely subjective, and I still enjoyed the overall tone of the book.

All in all, ACES WILD is a book filled with excellent characters and a great concept, and will certainly not disappoint.

I needed a few days to gather my thoughts on this book, because I went through it so fast, and my response to it was mainly to scream about it on Twitter.

After I finished it, I experienced that drop of a book hangover, so I didn’t want to write about it right away. I was pretty excited about the premise of this book, and it did not disappoint in delivering it. My main barrier with heist books tends to be believing that people would do something so risky and trust such convoluted plans to work, but I had no problem understanding Jack’s motivation and buying his mostly improvised plans. This was a desperate child trying to rescue his mom from her own mistakes, and I was one hundred percent invested. Even more so when we meet the group in person.

The personalities really shined through with the crew, and I love that they were all Ace in a completely natural way (because honestly, I too have mostly online friends that are all queer). I especially loved Lucky and Gabe, and I’m waiting for the sequel where they get to be MCs already. They’re hilarious.

Overall, though, a super enjoyable, incredibly fast read, and as someone who is probably on the spectrum myself (more on the grey side), it just feels so good to read a book with so many characters that are not falling in lust with some other character! We need more casts like this. I loved it.

3,5⭐

Well you can't expect me to not jump on board when I hear (illegal) gambling, family secrets and asexual representation, so it was clear for me to get into this story asap.

"Aces Wild" is, well, wild when it comes to its concepts. It's a retelling of King Arthur's story dressed in Las Vegas clothes – or, perhaps I should say, cards. Jack Shannon's family has its flaws, but they stick together, even if they seem like puzzle pieces from five different boxes. He also has his own crew of friends, with which help he's going to change the playing world of casinos with a bang.

The writing is really good, the best part of it is humor. Gosh, I love such narration, Jack's way of telling story can give high five Percy Jackson's one. Characters don't seem like a cardboard cutouts, but real, complicated people, and that's great. I fell in love with the crew of Aces Wild deeper the longer I kept reading.

The story itself is not the complicated one, which I should praise, as the author managed to keep it real to the character's age. There wasn't anything unnatural or impossible that would make it abstract, which counts as a positive. Yet in its simplicity lies the fact that not really much happened. It's a heist, sure, and there is a heist, but besides from that one moment it's more static? More focused on emotions and ways such plot twists influence characters? Which is interesting, because AW goes for a young adult book, but unfocused on the romantic subplot – in fact one lacking such, and it successes. It could use one last big boom at the end, cause while the main story is closed, it would be nice to see other subplots' finales, too.

It's a great book if you're looking for a nice YA, the same yet so different from its genre, with ace and non-binary representation, marvellous jokes and a cast of characters you'll love.

an ace friend group breaks into a casino? t sounds right up my alley. unfortunately it was underwhelming. i expected it to be exciting and action-packed but i felt it was lacking that aspect. the characters were also quite underdeveloped despite the amount of time they had in the story.

Thank you to PeachTree Teen for providing me with an eARC of this book!

This book was so fun! From the description, I was expecting a much darker story, but I actually appreciated the lighter/sweeter tone it actually took. This is a story all about friendship and the things we do for our friends/found family, and it was a really refreshing story, honestly.

The heist was great, though I found it did drag a bit in the middle. The characters were my favourite part. They worked well as a group and you could really feel the friendship. As someone with a similar group of 'we met online' friends, their entire dynamic felt all too relatable.

Overall this was a fun little story that got me out of a reading slump (thank you, Amanda DeWitt!) and was thoroughly enjoyable. I very much appreciated the asexual representation, and specifically the discussion about how being ace really can be a spectrum and mean different things to different people. If you're a fan of heists and teens doing questionable things, I highly recommend this!

As a librarian, I will also be suggesting this for addition to my YA collection. I think a lot of my kids will enjoy this as well!

This book had everything that I needed. Asexual rep? Check. A heist? Check. Teenagers making Star Wars references? Check. Aces Wild was a super fun read that is essentially “be asexual, do crime.” It was so refreshing to read a book with characters that I could see myself in. But also, the teenagers in this book genuinely felt like teenagers. I adored this book from start to finish.

The good
+ A group of asexual friends planning a heist
+ Their online friendship turning into live friendship and even sibling-like interactions sometimes
+ "I didn't know where people found the time to have sexual attraction"

The neutral
o I was kindly provided with an ARC. My review remains honest and unbiased
o I don't really understand why Jack, the youngest Shannon, was the heir, and not one of his sisters. I understood why not Beth, but why did Kerry get skipped?

The bad
- We didn't really get to know any of the characters. I knew like two facts per friend (Gabe is aro and tall, Georgia is not from Georgia and good at maths, Remy has a dog and is bad at maths, Lucky is fourteen (and a half) and good with tech), which I think is way too little for the amount of screentime each of them had
- Lucky was fourteen and able to hack a casino. Yeah, right...
- Beth was an awful sister and dealt with zero repercussions for her behavior. If I were Jack, I wouldn't have forgiven her
- Kerry was a plot device instead of a sister. She should've been involved
- Jack invited all of his friends, then basically ignored them, lied to them (after they all promised no more lies) and tried to do everything alone time and time again
- Jack was going into a dangerous situation. Lucky tried to give him critical information. Jack removed their only source of contact before she could finish. What the fuck, Jack?
- Jack was gone for a looooooooong time without contacting his friends at all and just leaving them alone when they counted on him. They were all worried sick and Jack was just like yeah but I got information (accidentally) so I don't feel guilt
- Jack was just a bad friend to his ace buddies
- We didn't get to know Jack's love interest at all. They shared one moment, held hands once and then went back to other sides of the country. Then the book was over. Just exclude the romance if it ends like this, instead of involving it like some kind of mandatory ingredient for a story
- Basically, everything Aces Wild did as part of their plans failed or had the wrong results. In the end, everything happened due to chance and an outside source of help


I was really excited for this book. Hello, a gang of ace friends robbing a casino? Count me in! Unfortunately, it was just Jack the horrible friend ditching his friends and using them whenever it was convenient for him, only to fail at all of his plans time and time again. I wouldn't recommend this book, as it did not deliver what was promised.

4.5 stars rounded

Five aces plan a Las Vegas heist, what could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out, but it's a fun ride nonetheless.

This was a book that I, as a person who is always on the look out for more ace books, knew I had to read as soon as I saw the description.

Now, when it comes to asexual representation (and queer representation as a whole), there's always a need for both books that are about being asexual and books that are about people who just happen to be asexual doing interesting stuff & having adventures. And though it touches upon the first (it is, after all, an important part of who these characters are), for the most part this book definetely falls into the latter category.

Five ace friends who first met online come together in RL after one of their number, Jack's, mother is arrested. He is determined to prove that fellow Las Vegas casino owner and all round shady guy Peter Carlverlo is responsible and free his mum. The best way to do this? Sneaking into Peter's secret high-flyers-only casino club, of course.

Jack as a character is compelling and messy and human - a teenager in over-his-head but determined not to give up. I really enjoyed the dynamic with him and his friends, in particular, the scenes between him and his crush, Remy, as the pair try to navigate their feelings and being ace and just the messiness of a teenage crush. As Jack himself says, this is not a love story, but it still has a few sweet little moments. Though, I would have perhaps liked to have seen a little more of the friends throughout the story and gotten to know them as people a little bit better - Jack does have a bad habit of going-off to do his own thing.

I loved the style of the writing in this. First person can be a little hit-and-miss for me, but it works here, with Jack narrating the story of what happened, which allows for some humour and playing around with narrative choices.

Overall, a fun heist novel with a touch of heart and ace characters at its centre.

I received a free copy from Netgalley in return for a honest review.

This is a solid YA, coming-of-age story about (found) family and (online) friends and it's good rep for asexual kids.

However, it's not really my cup of tea and it let me down a bit. Comparing anything to Six of Crows or Kaz Brekker is going to give me VERY HIGH expectations, especially when we're comparing heist books. The heist wasn't as suspenseful as I was hoping for. Also, generally speaking, I should probably stay away from YA - I'm starting to grow out of it and it's starting to feel a little too repetitive and childish.

But for someone who likes YA, this is great. I was worried it would sound a little too much like (bad) fanfiction. It didn't.

This was my most anticipated book of the year and it did not disappoint. All it took for me to get excited about this was the cast of asexual characters and adding a heist on top of that was even more spectacular. I will say that this definitely is more relationship and character focused than it is on the heist part but for me that made me love it even more and it was all very fun to read. The characters all have my heart, they were amazing and I love them more than anything. Overall I really loved this and I would highly recommend it!