Point of View

The novel is narrated in first-person present by two different characters, Chiamaka and Devon. Devon starts the novel and Chiamaka ends the novel, and both of them get equal time and space inside the book. The whole novel takes place mostly during a month-long period between the first day of school at Niveus Academy and the Snowflake Ball. Although the novel is told in the present-tense, key moments in the histories of Chiamaka and Devon, like the fake car accident that Chiamaka is involved in and the one and only time Devon visits his father in prison, are retold in italics that also exist in first-person.

As the only two Black students at the exclusive and majority white prep school, Chiamaka and Devon are signaled out and attacked by the secret society, Aces, which aims to destroy the lives of talented and promising Black students...