Ace of Spades by Sandra Owens

Narrated by Amy McFadden & Sebastian York

Trigger Warning: domestic/child abuse

I have enjoyed the previous books in the Aces & Eights series, so I was looking forward to Ace of Spades. Unfortunately, it mostly didn’t work for me on a story level. In the past Sandra Owens’s books have been very successful for me so I don’t expect this to be a continuing trend.

In my previous reviews, of Jack of Hearts and King of Clubs, I did mention that there was a certain amount of suspension of disbelief required; the premise of the series is that the three Gentry brothers, Alex, Court and Nate, are all FBI agents in Miami, who work undercover as co-owners of a biker bar, Aces & Eights. It’s a frankly unbelievable setup, but I was prepared to go with it. However, Ace of Spades took that premise and ran out the door with it like a dog stealing sausage links.

Nate is the eldest Gentry brother. He and fellow FBI special agent, Taylor Collins, have clearly had an unacknowledged attraction over the course of the previous books. All the boys were horribly abused by their alcoholic, violent father as children and the worst of the abuse fell on Nate. After their mother left (because she was pregnant and her peach of a husband tried to “beat the baby out of her” as he did not believe the child was his – it was-), Nate as the eldest became surrogate parent to the younger boys. He was basically a superhero from age 11. Nate is aware that a percentage of children who have been abused grow up to become abusers themselves and he’s terrified he could turn into his dad. He’s never discussed his fear with anyone, not even his brothers, but as a result of it, he has decided never to marry or have any kind of ongoing relationship with a woman and never to have children.

Taylor is the daughter of a murdered prostitute. The case remains unsolved. After her mother was killed, Taylor was taken in by a hooker with a heart of gold (who then left “the life”), Rosie, who then raised her like her own daughter. Rosie, with adult Taylor’s help, now has six foster daughters all with traumatic backgrounds.

When the story begins, Nate is advised that there has been a prostitute murdered – the third such crime recently – and that the FBI are now investigating it as a serial killer case. He is the lead on the investigation. But Nate is an undercover operative. He and his brothers still run Aces & Eights. They work until 3am most mornings at the bar. This happens all through the investigation in this book. So, Nate is working all day trying to catch a serial killer and then working all night at Aces & Eights (undercover!) and oh yeah, in amongst that, there’s the burgeoning romance between him and Taylor.

I just couldn’t believe it. It made no sense that he was continuing to work “undercover” (even though there was apparently no active undercover investigation going on into bikers or relevant to the bar… which… what??) but was also working full time as the lead investigator on a high-profile serial killer case.

There were numerous continuity errors in the story as well. For instance, there’s a bit where the killer sees Taylor and Nate together and he’s uncertain whether Nate is just Taylor’s boyfriend or a fellow agent. But he’s already seen Nate at a crime scene in an FBI cap and an FBI jacket! (Great undercover work there, Nate!)

I was uncomfortable with some of the romance as well. From the start there is clearly attraction and chemistry between Taylor and Nate but Nate is adamant he’s not going there. Taylor quickly wears him down after she propositions him with a “friends with benefits” type deal. She’s already in love with him and dreams of wedding bells with Nate but she tells him she’s a big girl and she’s not looking for a husband. Sure, she’s not looking for a husband right that second, but that’s the only way that statement isn’t a lie. Anyway, they hook up and it is (of course) amazing but then the serial killer case takes a personal turn (I don’t think it’s hard to guess what that is) and as the lead investigator, Nate makes a call that Taylor does not like.

Taylor’s reaction to this, after earlier that evening promising Nate that no matter what they would always be best friends, is to tell him “I hate you”. It is childish and vastly unprofessional. There wasn’t really any discussion in the book about the potential pitfalls of a relationship between a boss and his subordinate and there needed to be because I saw it as an ongoing problem. But more than that, Taylor was not only not living up to her end of their “relationship bargain”, she was being a shitty employee too.

They manage to work that out but then almost immediately thereafter Taylor starts pushing for more and there’s more relationship drama. There was too much push/pull for me. Taylor came across to me as immature and it didn’t fill me with confidence that they could successfully deal with issues which will inevitably arise as they go through life together.

Nate’s turnaround from “never, not ever” to “I love you, move in with me” was predictable (that in itself isn’t a complaint – that’s the trope) but way too fast.

It’s true that I probably became pickier the more annoyed I became at the preposterousness of certain aspects of the story. But there is really only so much suspension of disbelief I can stomach in one book. If there’s not some real-world scaffolding, the whole structure collapses for me.

The narration by Sebastian York was solid. I enjoyed his sections the most. He voiced the portions of the story from Nate’s POV as well as the (smaller) sections from the killer’s. He mispronounced a couple of words here and there but they were small things in the big picture.

Amy McFadden had the burden of performing a character who annoyed me often. She had a good Cuban accent for Rosie and I did enjoy her child-voices for the six foster children. Taylor’s voice however was inconsistent. There were times when Ms. McFadden put on a slightly deeper and more ‘snobby’ tone for Taylor but it did not hold and always inevitably became her usual narrating voice. The thing is, that slightly deeper and more snobby voice sounded like someone pretending to be someone else, whereas, Rosie’s voice or Nate’s sounded like someone else was talking.

Had the story worked better for me, I expect the narration would have felt more successful too. I’ve tried to grade it on that basis to be fair, because most of my issues were with the content.

I’m not giving up on this author by any stretch but Ace of Spades mostly did not work for me.

Kaetrin