Book Review: "Check & Mate" by Ali Hazelwood

4/5 stars 

*Spoiler alert!* 

“‘Then, since you have never even been part of a super-tournament, what makes you qualified to be here today? Why you and not someone else?’  

I swallow. ‘I just . . .’ Nothing. I got lucky. It’s a mistake. I’m not good enough and—  

‘Man’—Nolan snorts into the mic— ‘she literally won the qualifying tournament to be here. Keep up, will you?’” 

Yes, I read some YA for escapism, but also for kick-ass nerdy protagonists coming into their own. That’s what Check & Mate largely is about, even though it’s more of a romantic story, because Ali Hazelwood and all the commentary about the love interest being a veritable swimsuit model throughout the book. (Hey, nothing wrong with indulging womens’ romantic fantasies for once, rather than that of the male variety. It’s a romance novel; just push past it.)  

“God bless libraries.” 

Our kick-ass protagonist is Mallory Greenleaf. (I rooted for her early on, but the library comment really made me love her. No bias here, of course.) The oldest of three children, she finds herself the breadwinner of the family when her mother develops chronic rheumatoid arthritis—making her unable to work much—and her father leaves the family after an affair.

 

Her first love—aside from the both male and female romantic interests she’s had—is chess, although Mallory would deny it. At age 14, she hits pause on chess, the game she became quite good at under her father’s tutelage, when the aforementioned family drama happens. 

“He told me once that sometimes, with some people, it's not about winning or losing, that with some people, it's just about playing. Though for the longest time, I didn't really believe him.” 

Check & Mate finds Mallory at age 18 unexpectedly drawn back into the world of chess, playing in a charity chess tournament at the behest of her best friend, Easton. Reluctantly, she finds herself falling back in love with chess, and, unexpectedly, winning in a game against the world champion, Nolan Sawyer.

 

Being a chess fangirl, she knows Nolan’s reputation for being a sore loser and bolts after winning the game. However, Nolan seems more pleasantly surprised at having been bested, but Mallory decides she’s done her time at the tournament and chooses a speedy exit, hopefully back into obscurity.  

Not long after this, she receives a job offer to play chess at a prestigious New York chess club, one she doesn’t want to take—sore feelings about chess and all that—but is forced into to keep paying the bills when she is fired from her mechanic job.

 

Because Mallory is back in the chess world, she finds herself having to catch up on the four years of chess she’s missed and is competing in more tournaments to get her personal player rating higher. (Higher ratings=more access to prestigious tournaments. The paying ones.) Not to mention, Mallory finds herself around Nolan Sawyer much more than she’s comfortable with. Until she slowly becomes more comfortable with it. (I mean, who wouldn’t? A handsome nerd. Sign me up!)

 

“Galaxies pass through his black eyes, and I wonder whether this second could last a century. Whether the universe could be just me and him, understanding each other on a forever loop.” 

As Mallory ascends the rankings, she finds herself at the unlikely prospect of serving as second to Nolan as he prepares for the World Chess Championship in Italy. That means they find themselves in closer quarters, and you know where this cliché leads: they both start swooning over each other. It’s very cliché, but it was also very adorable and awkward. Nothing’s perfect.  

“He wakes up earlier, falls asleep later, works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. The rigors he puts himself through, the single- minded, indefatigable stubbornness as he stares at the engines, dissecting, retracing, combining, projecting. He’s tireless, unshakable. Driven in an indomitable, near- obsessive way. This iron- hard tenacity of his is an oddly attractive quality.”   

But when unexpected truths are revealed about Mallory’s position at the chess club, she doubts her worthiness for the prestigious position she finds herself in, as well as her budding relationship with Nolan. Not to mention, a cheating scandal propels her into another big game against Nolan at the big world championships.

 

How does it shake out? 

Well, I’m not going to spoil it. You’ll just have to read it for yourself! 

I will say I am a sucker for the enemies-to-lovers cliché, but Mallory and Nolan’s relationship developed fairly realistically, slow-burn and tested repeatedly, with them ultimately coming out of all of it as better chess players and better people. I think they make a good pair, bring out the best in the other. (Gah, I want another book with them, but alas...) 

Happy New Year! 

--BookOwl