Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

In this clever and swoonworthy YA debut from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis , life’s moving pieces bring rival chess players together in a match for the heart.
 

Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory’s focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious “Kingkiller” Nolan current world champion and reigning Bad Boy of chess.
 

Nolan’s loss to an unknown rook-ie shocks everyone. What’s even more confusing? His desire to cross pawns again. What kind of gambit is Nolan playing? The smart move would be to walk away. Resign. Game over. But Mallory’s victory opens the door to sorely needed cash-prizes and despite everything, she can’t help feeling drawn to the enigmatic strategist....
 

As she rockets up the ranks, Mallory struggles to keep her family safely separated from the game that wrecked it in the first place. And as her love for the sport she so desperately wanted to hate begins to rekindle, Mallory quickly realizes that the games aren’t only on the board, the spotlight is brighter than she imagined, and the competition can be fierce (-ly attractive. And intelligent…and infuriating…)

Check & Mate is a great YA novel that has a lot to like. Despite her works usually being classified as contemporary romance or chick lit, Check & Mate felt like it skewed more towards a coming of age (coming of adult age that is) contemporary fiction story rather than romance. It’s certainly there and shapes a lot of the plot’s overall narrative, but the majority of the book is focused on Mallory’s internal dilemmas and confrontations with her past guilt and perceived responsibilities. Despite finding it well done and solid across the board, as a grown man probably twice the age of the intended readers, unfortunately this was not a very enjoyable read for me (romance was nice, all of Mallory’s drama, not so nice). However this is very much a “it’s not the book, it’s me” scenario.

What I found to appreciate in Check & Mate is how well-written and developed the FMC Mallory is, and how relatable she likely can be. I was actually recommended this book to read from a friend who Mallory reminded me quite a lot of, minus some of her questionable emotional thought-processes. The way she thinks and acts, including character flaws that the world revolves around her and all of that teenage angst, I thought was well-done and appropriate. Besides obvious pop culture references, some of her inner demons and concerns are things I and many others certainly have experienced (many yrs ago, oops). Some of these social media references or attempts at gen z likes felt a bit forced like Timothée Chalamet, Riverdale that has since ended, Dragon age, candy crush (these all feel past their prime relevancy), but the actual content of what the characters did felt right.

The themes in the novel are also those that I love to see highlighted including the social stigma against women in certain sports or fields (a recurring theme across Ali Hazelwood’s works), negative publicity and the press, the difficulty of single parent families, etc. The family dynamic and pressure of being the oldest sibling was great, even though I had almost no idea what they were saying to each other at first, which was heightened by Hazelwood’s frequent run-on sentences or unusual sentence structure (this gradually improved and seemed to tone down after the first 100 pages or so). Despite having surprisingly few appearances and chapters, I liked how the love interest Nolan was written. Their chemistry felt believable and despite the attraction and interest, these are chess players first and foremost. I loved how quick they fell into a professional working relationship before any sort of romantic one was established, despite the obvious interest. The overall plot was paced well and as someone who used to play chess casually when I was younger, the plot elements and chess research was good!

The biggest drawback and unfortunate comparison Check & Mate is obviously going to pull is with the Queen’s Gambit. Despite it being more of a historical novel and lacking the overt romantic happy ending, it unfortunately created a subconscious standard for female chess-related stories for me. Although I thought Check & Mate was overall solid, it somehow fell into an unfortunate middle ground where I either wanted more chess content or more romance. The exploration of professional chess was well done and reflected on the nuances of FIDE ratings and the competitive circuit, but the chess games themselves left something to be desired. Once the chess games actually started, they were consistently glossed over or paraphrased in general recaps where I would’ve liked to see more details or competitive intensity; areas that the Queens Gambit was stellar in. I’m not saying every author has to be professionally experienced to write about something, but the constant skirting of chess’s more complex elements began to feel like a copout. I would’ve liked to see the chess community commentary go deeper or delve into the monetary aspects that were only lightly brushed on. On the flipside, if viewed as a YA romance novel, the romance was good but didn’t feel like enough. Nolan was a love interest but his actual appearance felt so few and far between (friend Emil feels like he has almost as many chapters as Nolan does) and the book never really delved into what exactly Nolan found captivating about Mallory and her chess playing. Obviously you can draw an inference and conclusion from their dynamics leading up to the novel’s conclusion, but it feels like a missed opportunity to flesh his character out more since we’re not really given much information about what he thinks or feels (and even less on his backstory). There’s cool, logical and detached, then there’s undeveloped and MIA.

This leads me into one of my personal subjective gripes with reading this book which is Mallory being insufferable to read about. When the story isn’t focused on an actual chess tournament or her relationship with Nolan (even at the same time with Nolan sometimes), the bulk of the book is all on Mallory’s personal coming of age drama. This is almost entirely due to me being a grown man reading about the insecurities and emotional thought-processes of an 18yr old, but it just made me feel really tired and old. While I appreciated how well she was written and developed from an objective writing standpoint, she was quite frustrating and tiring to read about, which is a common trend and personal preference thing for many contemporary fiction books for me (or more specifically, a lot of books that are trending on booktok and social media). All of the conflicts of the book can be summarized as Mallory projecting all of her own issues and insecurities on others and making it all about her when she thinks she’s actually doing the opposite. The emotional immaturity is something that can obviously resonate with younger readers, however to me it just made her look like the true villain of the story. The reading experience of Check & Mate heavily hinges on the enjoyment of Mallory’s character and for me, it was a definite drawback.

To recap, Check & Mate is a great book, but not for me (and likely a lot of adult readers). I can tell Ali Hazelwood is a good author and the plot was well-crafted and evenly paced, it’s just Mallory’s drama that came off as silly teenage angst coupled with my usual distaste for the miscommunication trope. Despite being working on this book in 2021 and its publication being only a year ago, a lot of the pop culture references, slang, and comedic elements also feel dated already. The references are cute now, but often feel try-hard and I can’t imagine them aging very well, even only a few years from now. However, the silver lining is that Check & Mate was Ali Hazelwood’s first foray into the YA genre which most of my issues with this book can be traced back to. I’m cautiously optimistic that trying one of her standard adult fiction novels will go better (if not, it’s time to flame to death- I mean lightly roast my friend on her book suggestions to me).