A review (sprinkled with some mild spoilers) for the YA debut novel by bestselling author Ali Hazelwood
Hello my lovelies, and welcome to yet another Wednesday book review! Today we’re going to be talking about “Check & Mate,” a YA romance set in the world of competitive chess. Now, I know nothing about chess except “white goes first” and “horsey is cute,” but I’ve read a couple of Ali Hazelwood’s adult romance novels, so I thought, “Why not, I’ll give this a try, it might be interesting.”
I’ll start off with my star rating: a solid 4 out of 5 for me.
The book follows Mallory Greenleaf (and sadly no, she is not an elf) as she works hard at her job as a mechanic, living paycheck to paycheck to keep her family afloat. Her mother is ill and her two younger sisters just don’t get how much Mallory is sacrificing to make sure they have everything they need, including food and shelter. Once an amateur chess player – who learned from her father – she no longer plays the game due to events that happened in her family several years earlier. Like, she’s adamant she will never pick up another pawn again.
Of course, things don’t happen the way Mallory expects them to, and she ends up doing a favor for a friend and enters into a charity chess event, where she wipes the floor clean with the competition – and even beats the number one player in the world, Nolan Sawyer.
Things pick up rather quickly for Mallory after that: she gets noticed and is offered a deal of a lifetime (for chess players anyway) to become a professional chess player and be paid for it. Nolan is still obsessing about the girl who kicked his ass at his own game, and wants to play her again at all costs, and Mallory just wants to be left alone in her life, but the pay from the chess job is too hard to ignore. As is the love she once had for the game.
So I really enjoyed this book. The pacing was well done; I finished this book pretty quickly since it was an easy read. I can see how other readers were turned off with all the different pop culture references (I mean, is there really a ChessTok?), but for me they weren’t overly annoying. It’s a YA novel; TikTok is going to be mentioned. It’s used by about a billion people at this point, and no I’m not being facetious. I’m pretty sure it’s hit a billion.
Mallory is an angry girl, and I’m all for it, even when I didn’t agree with her on some points. The big thing that eventually comes out about why she quit chess in the first place is because it was through chess where she found out her father was cheating on her mother. He was sleeping with an arbiter (someone who oversees matches and makes sure the rules are being followed), and Mallory blames herself for the infidelity. She was not only playing chess all the time, causing her father and the woman he was cheating with to cross paths, but Mallory also couldn’t handle the deception of keeping it from her mother, so she told her. Immediately after, her mother kicks her father out of the house and they divorce soon after that.
I can see how Mallory puts all that on her shoulders; teenagers tend to do that sometimes, especially when they have something in their head and no one is around to not only know what’s in their head, but also not there to tell them, “No honey, this is not your fault.” Come on, how many kids who have divorced parents believed at one point or another that they had something to do with it? *Raises hand* Yep, thought so.
Mallory holds on to this pain and anger for several years because she also can’t get closure: Not only did her parents split up, but soon after that her father passed away unexpectedly. So when the world of chess comes barreling back into her life, she has no one to talk to about it because she refuses to tell her mother and sisters in fear of upsetting them and ruining their dynamic.
All right, that’s fine. I get that. But also, no? Ugh, I wanted to scream at Mallory like, “Stop! Tell your family! You’re going to make it worse if you don’t!” Alas, this girl seems as stubborn as a mule.
The romance was meh. Nolan as a love interest felt pretty basic to me, so it wasn’t as exciting as I was hoping for a romance novel. It was sweet in some parts though. I did really enjoy Mallory and Nolan’s dynamic as chess players playing together. I felt like that had more character and depth than their romance. Maybe because not-so-deep down I know they still have unresolved issues from their past; I mean, that story Nolan told about his grandfather? Eeesh! Pretty bleak. Plus the issues Mallory still has with her late father and how she delved right back into a world she told herself she would never think about again. I need these two in therapy, stat.
There is a side character that you’re supposed to hate, but it was almost cartoonish the way he was portrayed. Koch, a fellow chess player who always seems to get second place behind Nolan’s first, is Nolan’s “archenemy” and “rival” in the world of chess. That’s cool, there’s gotta be some kind of antagonist that isn’t just the two main character’s unresolved mental and emotional trauma, right?
But he’s just… too much, you know? While I know nothing about the world of professional chess, I can totally understand the world of an historically male-dominated sport that has very few women. I can almost smell the misogyny mixed with the mahogany and cigar smoke.
But this Koch character. His sexist remarks and blatant disdain for anyone with a vagina was just so over the top it actually pulled me out of the story. I can’t really remember any of the lines specifically. Probably due to having such a reaction to them, which I’m sure the author was hoping for. But when a character is so abhorrent that I picture him twirling a mustache like Snidely Whiplash before he ties a blonde chick to a set of train tracks, it kind of takes me out of it, and not in a good way. He was a very one-dimensional character. And to have Koch’s downfall go that way… I rolled my eyes, not gonna lie.
The subplot of Mallory and her BFF Easton’s friendship slowly fading over time only to have Easton come to the championship for Mallory was so bittersweet. I know all about fading friendships; it happens all the time with all the people. Especially when one friend goes off to college in another part of the country and you’re… not doing that. I could feel Mallory’s emotions and fears about losing Easton, but she kept them under the surface because she had to be strong. People outside of that kind of dynamic are always like, “OMG just call them already, what the hell are you doing?” But for some reason it’s harder than it sounds! I remember reaching out to an old friend via DM after a few years of no contact and it was awkward and scary and she left me on read after three messages. Even as a woman in her 30’s, that shit sucks. It’s the fear that that person not only doesn’t need you in their lives, but they don’t want you in it either. I can see that being a fear of Mallory’s. The unknown is just a little less scary than the known of a friendship potentially being over.
But Easton did the “big gesture” and went all the way to Italy for Mallory, and that was such an amazing thing for her to do, especially because Mallory really needed that. She needed her best friend and she was there for her, even when it felt like she wasn’t during the whole dang book. I don’t know, that jerked my little heartstrings more than the romance of the book.
The ending was a style choice I’m not really a fan of. I liked the way the final chapter ended, but then we get an epilogue that’s just a news story? Plus, it’s supposed to be a BBC story but it reads like a Buzzfeed article. Maybe I just haven’t read BBC in a while, but to have one of the subheadings in your BBC story to read CHESS IS COOL, ACTUALLY is certainly something.
I think we as readers feel the need to have the romance end in a non-ambiguous way. At least in American literature or film. See, I liked the ending to this book, where it’s just the two of them over a chessboard right before the game starts, smiling at each other like they know they’re going to play the best fucking game of their lives – just like Nolan has been wanting the whole time.
But to add the news story epilogue… it could’ve been cut.
I always think of the 2005 film “Pride and Prejudice” with Kiera Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, and everyone’s favorite cinnamon roll, Mr. Bingley. If you’re familiar with the film, the original (UK version) ended with Elizabeth talking with her father about marrying Mr. Darcy and how she was wrong about him the whole time and loved him dearly. It ends with her father giving her his blessing and he laughs joyfully when she runs off, because that’s all he wanted for her: to marry for love, not just money or “protection,” whatever that means in the early 1800s. There is actually another version – the US version – where they have an additional scene with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy sitting at his estate and talking about cute nicknames. There’s a final kiss after that, and it turns black.
Look, I can see both sides with those endings, but you get my point, yeah? Some audiences can’t have the more ambiguous endings when it comes to romantic stories. Jane Austen did not have Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy kiss in her novel, so the UK version is more true to the source material. However; I can see it being hard to market a romance without the more physical aspects of a romance, especially in this day and age.
But when it comes to this novel? For me? I was good without the epilogue. Maybe because they already hooked up earlier in the book.
And there’s “Check & Mate” for you! Have you read it yet? Let me know your thoughts below. Until next time my lovelies!
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