Check & Mate

I picked up this book on a dare from a friend who knows I lose at chess in about twelve moves. She said, you do not need to like chess to like this one. She was right, though it helped that I learned just enough as a kid to follow a fork and a pin without flipping to a diagram. Ali Hazelwood published Check & Mate in 2023 with G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers. It runs 368 pages and it was her first book for teens after a run of adult science romances. I read it in two sittings, mostly because I needed to know if Mallory would play the last game for herself or for everyone else.

Mallory Greenleaf is eighteen and tired in the way only someone who has carried a family can be tired. As a young teen she was a chess prodigy who walked away from the board and did not look back. Now she lives with her mom and her two younger sisters, works a dead end job at an auto garage, fixes what she can, and keeps the household running. Money is short. Her younger sister needs costly care, her mom works hard and worries hard, and chess sits in the past like a closed room. Mallory tells herself she quit because the game hurt her family. Part of that is true. Part of it is fear that she cannot be both a good daughter and a good player.

The girl who quit

The opening chapters do a smart thing. They do not start with a trophy. They start with oil under fingernails, a bus schedule, a grocery list, and a best friend who will not take no for an answer.

Mallory’s best friend Easton drags her to a charity chess tournament for reasons that have more to do with cute boys and a free Saturday than with comebacks. Mallory plans to lose early and leave. She wears the wrong shoes for a long day. She expects to feel nothing. Then she sits down and the old patterns light up again. She sees lines, she counts tempi in her head, she remembers how it feels to sit with a clock ticking and trust her gut.

Hazelwood writes Mallory’s voice as dry and guarded. She jokes with Easton, she deflects with her mom, she keeps adults at arm’s length. At home she helps with homework, argues about bills, and tries to keep her sisters from seeing how thin things are. At work she is competent and overlooked. Chess is the one place where she was once seen as special, and that is exactly why she left it. Winning had started to feel tied to loss. If she won, someone else paid. If she cared, it hurt more when life fell apart. So she chose family and buried the board.

I liked how unglamorous this part feels. There is no montage. There is a girl counting tips, skipping a tournament she could have won years ago, telling herself she is fine. When Easton signs her up almost as a joke, Mallory agrees because the entry supports a good cause and because a small part of her misses the fight.

Beating the Kingkiller

The charity event turns when Mallory is paired against Nolan Sawyer. In this world Nolan is the reigning world champion, a young star fans call the Kingkiller for the way he takes down top players. He is quiet, polite in interviews, ruthless on the board, and used to winning youth events and opens without much trouble.

Mallory beats him. Not in a blur. In a real game where she defends, finds a tactic, and converts under pressure. The room notices. Phones come out. Someone posts the score sheet. Overnight she goes from nobody to the girl who beat Sawyer at a fundraiser.

What I enjoyed here is that Hazelwood lets the win be awkward rather than triumphant. Mallory does not celebrate. She apologizes in her head, wants to leave, and feels sick about the attention. Nolan does not throw a fit. He studies the final position, asks a short question about one move, and looks more interested than angry. That interest becomes the engine for the rest of the book.

The fallout is practical. Tournament directors invite her to bigger events with actual prize money. A few thousand dollars here and there would change things at home. Medical bills, car repairs, rent gaps. Mallory does the math and hates herself for doing it. Her mom has made it clear that chess took too much from them already. Her sisters need her present, not traveling. Yet the garage job will never cover what they need. Cash prizes pull her back more than pride does, and that keeps her sympathetic. She is not chasing glory. She is chasing breathing room.

Cash, circuits, and a reluctant coach

The middle of the book follows Mallory onto the open circuit. These are weekend Swiss tournaments in hotel ballrooms with bad coffee, flickering lights, and long rounds that stretch for hours. Hazelwood captures the texture well: the quiet, the scoresheets, the parents pacing in hallways, the kids with headphones replaying lines, the older masters who grunt instead of saying hello.

Mallory enters as an unrated comeback story and starts beating rated players. Her style is sharp and stubborn. She likes open positions, she calculates cleanly, she defends worse spots longer than people expect. Prize checks start coming in, small at first, then larger. She hides some of it from her mom, which creates a low hum of guilt on every page.

Nolan reappears not as a villain but as a strange ally. He offers to train with her, then to help her prepare for specific opponents. At first Mallory refuses. She does not want charity from the guy she beat, and she does not want rumors that she is sleeping her way to wins or using his name for invites. He is patient in a way that feels real for his character. He texts about lines, sends puzzles, shows up to watch her games from a distance. Slowly they build a practice routine. They analyze together, they argue about a rook endgame, they play blitz until her sisters text her to come home.

The romance grows out of that work. It is rivals to lovers but without much posturing. They tease, they keep score, they respect each other’s brains. Nolan is written as decent and a little lonely, famous since his teens and tired of being treated as a brand. Mallory is prickly and loyal, quick to assume the worst when money or family comes up. Their banter about openings and bad tournament sandwiches carries a lot of chapters. For a YA book, Hazelwood keeps physical scenes sweet and mostly closed door, with kissing and talk about consent and clear boundaries.

Family pressure runs beside the romance. Mallory’s mom finds out about the return and reacts with fear rather than pride. From her point of view, chess once consumed their home and left marks. She asks Mallory to promise she will not disappear into it again. Mallory tries to keep both promises, to her mom and to herself as a player, and fails in small ways that stack up. She misses dinner, she lies about where she was, she snaps at her sisters. The book is good on this bind. Loving a hard game while holding a family together costs time and sleep, and someone always notices.

Learning to love the board again

One of my favorite threads is Mallory relearning why she liked chess before it became loaded. Hazelwood gives her quiet beats between rounds: replaying a win on a pocket set, laughing at a silly trap Easton falls for, staying up late to study a classic game because it is beautiful, not because it pays.

Nolan helps here without fixing her. He talks about his own burnout, about hating travel, about playing for sponsors and federations until the joy thinned out. They compare notes on being child stars. People wanted pieces of them. Coaches wanted results. Parents wanted security. Neither got a normal teen life. That shared past makes their bond feel earned rather than instalove.

Her sisters get lovely small scenes. They make signs, they ask if Nolan is her boyfriend with zero tact, they watch streams they barely follow and cheer when the eval bar swings. Easton provides comic relief and backbone, calling out Mallory when she self sabotages and driving her to events when the bus fails. The garage boss is gruff but fair, giving shifts and docking pay when she is late, which keeps the money stakes concrete.

Tournament chess itself is explained in plain terms. Hazelwood pauses to define Swiss pairings, tiebreaks, ratings, time controls, and prep. Some readers will love these asides. I did for about half the book. She shows how players prepare with engines, how they pick lines to surprise a specific rival, how they manage the clock when down to minutes. One strong scene has Mallory spending an entire evening prepping a line for a morning round, only to have her opponent deviate on move six. She has to think from scratch with her heart pounding. Anyone who has taken a test they studied the wrong chapter for will feel it.

The wobble before the finish

No romance is complete without a late break, and this one leans on miscommunication. I will keep spoilers light, but the shape is familiar. A secret about money and entries comes out. Mallory assumes Nolan pulled strings that cheapen her wins. Nolan assumes Mallory does not trust him at all. They fight, they separate before a big event, and Mallory has to decide whether to play the final tournaments on her own terms.

I wish this part trusted the characters more. The misunderstanding lasts a little too long and relies on both of them not asking one direct question. Mallory’s shame about hiding chess from her mom bleeds into her romance, which makes sense, but the book frames it as a twist rather than a talk. Teens will likely forgive it. I sighed, put the book down, made tea, and came back because I cared who won the next game.

The chess info dumps also pile up here. Openings get named, variations get listed, clock times get quoted move by move. If you play, these passages add flavor. If you do not, they can blur. Hazelwood usually rescues a dense stretch with a joke or a cut to Easton in the audience mouthing be nice. Still, two long tournament chapters in a row tested my patience. A tighter edit could have cut a few pages of prep talk and kept the tension.

The note on steam is fair to mention for Hazelwood fans. Her adult books are known for open door scenes and frank talk. This is a YA debut with a lighter touch. There is attraction, kissing, and discussion of boundaries, but scenes fade and focus stays on chess and family. Some readers wanted more heat. I thought the choice fit Mallory’s age and the story’s focus on trust. Expect flirting and yearning rather than explicit pages.

What works, what drags, who should read it

What works is the core. Mallory is a specific, believable eighteen year old, not a generic strong girl. She is good at chess, bad at asking for help, funny when tired, and fierce about her sisters. Nolan avoids the cold genius cliche by being kind in concrete ways. He remembers her sister’s recital, he carries her bag without making a show of it, he loses gracefully and wins without gloating. Their practice sessions feel like real flirting between smart teens who express care by sending puzzles at midnight.

The family story gives the romance weight. This is not only will they kiss. It is can Mallory want something big without betraying her mom, can her mom let her try again, can talent coexist with duty. The final tournament works because the prize matters for rent and care, but also because Mallory finally admits she missed the game itself. She plays freer, takes a risk in a key position, and lives with the result. That rekindled love of the sport, more than any trophy, is the payoff.

Fair criticism stays. Beyond the info dumps and the third act talk that never happens, the book sometimes softens money stress too quickly. A big check solves a problem that in real life returns next month. A few side opponents are thin, there to lose and praise her. And readers who want hard chess may find the games summarized rather than shown in full. Hazelwood cares more about how it feels to sit at the board than about perfect notation.

Who should pick it up? Teens who like rivals to lovers with low angst about cheating and high focus on craft. Chess club kids who will catch the jokes about prep and eval bars. Adult Hazelwood readers who want her humor and brainy banter in a classroom safe package. If you need explicit romance, look to her adult titles. If you hate sports training montages, this may test you, since much of the middle is practice, travel, play, repeat.

I closed it liking Mallory more than when I started, which is my test for this kind of book. She starts by quitting to protect her people. She ends by learning that protection can include asking for a scholarship, taking coaching, and letting her mom see her play and be proud. The last pages do not tie every bill and bracket with a bow. They leave her with a rating climbing, a family still negotiating, and a boy who respects her enough to meet her at the board as an equal. For a story built on sixty four squares, that feels like plenty of room.