With spring around the corner, love is in the air, and it’s a perfect time to read cheesy rom-coms. A recent read for this season is “Check and Mate,” a romantic comedy that not only has a fun romance plot line, but also shows the breaking down of gender barriers in the chess universe.
“Check and Mate” is a young adult romance novel written by Ali Hazelwood and released on November 7, 2023. It was mainly advertised on TikTok (BookTok) and Instagram (Bookstagram) as Ali Hazelwood’s first young adult book, with her previous works being new adult romances only. Check and Mate gained quick popularity through social media, and was even named winner for best young adult fiction of 2023 on Goodreads. The book was originally inspired by the 2020 Netflix mini-series, “The Queen’s Gambit.”
The book centers around Mallory Greenleaf and her story as a chess player over the course of the book. Due to a secret of the past, Mallory feels pretentious towards chess, until her friend secretly signs her up for a local charity chess tournament. Mallory ends up beating all of her opponents, including the world’s “youngest and best grandmaster,” Nolan Sawyer. After winning the match, Mallory gets offered a chess fellowship. The book continues on with Mallory’s relationship with chess changing the more she plays, and so does her relationship with Nolan, the more she plays with him.
I ended up reading this book around Valentine’s Day which seemed very suitable. “Spoiler” There was a third act conflict that felt very forced and was very Ali Hazelwood coded. While I do love her writing style and some of her books in general, this is just something I ended up really disliking in every book I have previously read by her. Overall, the first three-fourths of the book was fun, adorable and enjoyable while the last quarter required more skimming instead of reading.
The book had a very gripping writing style and all the chapters began with a hook that makes you want to keep on reading, making the book actually pretty addictive from time to time. The banter between the characters was very witty and even though it might’ve seemed cheesy at times, it seemed fitting and didn’t ruin the book in any way. One thing that I didn’t enjoy though was the character development, which was a little bit muddled and at some point, Mallory even became annoying and a little icky to read about. Something else, that is purely my opinion, is how abrupt the ending was. I feel like it wasn’t what I wanted nor expected to happen. It wasn’t bad per se, it just felt like it could have had a more heartfelt and rational ending.
While the book did receive some mixed and bad reviews from some readers, generally the reviews were positive and the book was even rated 4.02 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. Reviews found on Goodreads show that the book is mainly praised for its portrayal of chess and the way the relationships were written. One reviewer, Kristan, mentioned that “the character dynamics among the MC’s family felt really interesting and made Mallory feel much more like a real person.” On the other hand, people who didn’t enjoy the book talked about how the writing style seemed very forced and like it was trying too hard to be a YA book, while others mentioned how some of the characters seemed to not have enough depth to them. User SK, claims that “[Nolan]has the personality of a rock. The man has no expression. I couldn’t care less if he had something to say or not, which mostly he does not.” Despite all these flaws and bad reviews, the book was an enjoyable, 4-star read, that is perfect for spring and just rom-com readers in general.
