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A review by aliciasrealm
Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood
5.0
Eighteen year old Mallory Greenleaf stopped playing chess years ago, after it tore her family apart. Now, she spends her days struggling to help her ailing mother support her younger sisters. When a friend convinces her to play in a charity chess tournament, Mallory manages to defeat world champion Nolan Sawyer, aka Kingkiller. Though Mallory had no intention to keep playing, Nolan is eager for a rematch, not to mention her family could really use the cash prizes. As she climbs the ranks and rediscovers her passion for the game, her rivalry with Nolan slowly becomes something more.
This book delivered a refreshingly different set-up from previous books in the Aliverse. Having just graduated from high school, Mallory is eighteen and struggling with her choice to stay home to support her family instead of going to college like her friends. Mallory's platonic relationships were kept in the forefront moreso than the romance and she was a well developed character with a strong coming-of-age story arc. I loved her relationships with her sisters! More on brand, the chess world is ridiculously sexist and Mallory must deal with a number of sexist jerks who don't believe she belongs there.
Though the romance felt more like a subplot at times, the tension and interactions between Mallory and Nolan were perfection. I adored Nolan from the beginning and his respect for Mallory had me swooning. The romance didn't overly rely on tropes and flipped the script in several ways. I picked up on the foreshadowing of certain story elements but it didn't feel super predictable.
This is solidly in the YA genre; no smut here, just fade to black. Mallory is Gen Z and the text is riddled with pop culture references, but the latter is nothing new (and, personally, I'm not complaining about the Timothée Chalamet references). Still, from my perspective as a millennial reader, it's lots of fun and perfect for fans of The Queen's Gambit. In the Aliverse, I rank this second to The Love Hypothesis--it was really good and different! More of this please!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the digital ARC.
This book delivered a refreshingly different set-up from previous books in the Aliverse. Having just graduated from high school, Mallory is eighteen and struggling with her choice to stay home to support her family instead of going to college like her friends. Mallory's platonic relationships were kept in the forefront moreso than the romance and she was a well developed character with a strong coming-of-age story arc. I loved her relationships with her sisters! More on brand, the chess world is ridiculously sexist and Mallory must deal with a number of sexist jerks who don't believe she belongs there.
Though the romance felt more like a subplot at times, the tension and interactions between Mallory and Nolan were perfection. I adored Nolan from the beginning and his respect for Mallory had me swooning. The romance didn't overly rely on tropes and flipped the script in several ways. I picked up on the foreshadowing of certain story elements but it didn't feel super predictable.
This is solidly in the YA genre; no smut here, just fade to black. Mallory is Gen Z and the text is riddled with pop culture references, but the latter is nothing new (and, personally, I'm not complaining about the Timothée Chalamet references). Still, from my perspective as a millennial reader, it's lots of fun and perfect for fans of The Queen's Gambit. In the Aliverse, I rank this second to The Love Hypothesis--it was really good and different! More of this please!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the digital ARC.