“Sometimes I’m scared that I imagined you. Sometimes I think you’re only in my head.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Check & Mate
Hi everyone! Today we will review Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood.
Mallory Greenleaf has made it very clear she doesn’t want to play chess anymore. But when she meets Nolan Sawyer, a well-known name in the chess community, things take a turn. The two are drawn to each other, playing game after game, winning, and gaining cash prizes; and of course, you can’t have an Ali Hazelwood book without romance. But, Mallory struggles to keep her Chess life separate from her family and realizes that there is more to this game then she thinks. This is also Ali Hazelwood’s first YA novel as well, introducing her to younger readers. If you like chess and romance, give it a shot.
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Now for my thoughts. For the record, Ali Hazelwood is in my list of top 5 favorite authors so maybe this review is a bit biased… but who cares. This was her first YA novel so I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t have super high expectations. But I was very surprised and I would re-read again if I just needed a simple book to read. Now can I also just say that I HATE that GoodReads doesn’t let you do half-stars… like come on, do better. But I gave this book a rating of 3.5/5 stars. It was very good and I did like the storyline, I definitely want to learn how to play chess now. But there were points where the book fell short, for example, the ending was so abrupt, like come on Ali, I want more!!! But in all, I think that if you’re a fan of Ali Hazelwood and were hesitating with this one because it’s YA, give it a shot, it’s not bad.
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