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abinthebooks 's review for:
Check & Mate
by Ali Hazelwood
*3.75
”When I’m with you Mallory, everything is different. When I’m with you, I want to play more than I want to win.”
Check & Mate is a hard book for me to rate. I really, really loved the first 2/3’s of this book, especially the first part where our heroine is getting back into chess. I also loved the hero in this story, Nolan Sawyer, who is the best chess player in the world. He was such a charming and sweet hero, and I was swooning every time he opened his damn mouth.
I think my two issues with this book however are #1 This is honestly just Gen Z (millennial coded) Queen’s Gambit fanfiction (there literally feels like exact copy and paste scenes from the show, and Beth and Benny cardboard cutouts) and #2 This book is written by Ali Hazelwood. Now, look, I don’t have anything against Ali Hazelwood as a person, but if you’ve read 2+ of her books, you probably know what I mean. She has very millennial, fanficy writing, with an unnecessary plethora of pop culture references (which range from Timotheé Chalamet, OnlyFans, Instagram and TikTok references OVER AND OVER again, Ed Sheeran (what actual teenage girl liked Ed Sheeran? None), Mean Girls “she doesn’t even go here” reference, erotica Bill Nye fanfiction, AO3, Harry Styles, Tumblr, Cole Sprouse (once again I say, what modern day teenage girl actually LIKES Cole Sprouse???), BTS, and so so so many more), and NPC YouTube Shorts humor.
The writing itself is just cringe, especially because you can tell she is trying to stay ”hip” and current and it’s just not done well. And, yes, Ali, no matter how many books you publish, we can still tell these are Reylo fanfictions no matter what character names you change or AU you come up with. And you’re probably like, Abi, why would you read it if you don’t like this author’s writing? This author has 3 published novels previous to this one, and 3 published novellas. I thought she’d change up her writing style since her debut novel, The Love Hypothesis. Unfortunately that was not the case…
Anyways, that’s why this book is so hard for my to rate. Because I really enjoyed some aspects (and I genuinely considered giving this book 5 stars in the first half), and hated Ali Hazelwood’s formula /: But for a YA book, I thought this was really cute for the most part, just not the most amazing thing I’ve read.
Additional Note: I adored this audiobook narrator, listen to this book if u can!!!
3.75 stars
* * *
My chess loving heart just about died!!!!I was like “oh my god a chess rom-com???!!” and then I read the description and he’s the “bad boy” of chess
”When I’m with you Mallory, everything is different. When I’m with you, I want to play more than I want to win.”
Check & Mate is a hard book for me to rate. I really, really loved the first 2/3’s of this book, especially the first part where our heroine is getting back into chess. I also loved the hero in this story, Nolan Sawyer, who is the best chess player in the world. He was such a charming and sweet hero, and I was swooning every time he opened his damn mouth.
I think my two issues with this book however are #1 This is honestly just Gen Z (millennial coded) Queen’s Gambit fanfiction (there literally feels like exact copy and paste scenes from the show, and Beth and Benny cardboard cutouts) and #2 This book is written by Ali Hazelwood. Now, look, I don’t have anything against Ali Hazelwood as a person, but if you’ve read 2+ of her books, you probably know what I mean. She has very millennial, fanficy writing, with an unnecessary plethora of pop culture references (which range from Timotheé Chalamet, OnlyFans, Instagram and TikTok references OVER AND OVER again, Ed Sheeran (what actual teenage girl liked Ed Sheeran? None), Mean Girls “she doesn’t even go here” reference, erotica Bill Nye fanfiction, AO3, Harry Styles, Tumblr, Cole Sprouse (once again I say, what modern day teenage girl actually LIKES Cole Sprouse???), BTS, and so so so many more), and NPC YouTube Shorts humor.
The writing itself is just cringe, especially because you can tell she is trying to stay ”hip” and current and it’s just not done well. And, yes, Ali, no matter how many books you publish, we can still tell these are Reylo fanfictions no matter what character names you change or AU you come up with. And you’re probably like, Abi, why would you read it if you don’t like this author’s writing? This author has 3 published novels previous to this one, and 3 published novellas. I thought she’d change up her writing style since her debut novel, The Love Hypothesis. Unfortunately that was not the case…
Anyways, that’s why this book is so hard for my to rate. Because I really enjoyed some aspects (and I genuinely considered giving this book 5 stars in the first half), and hated Ali Hazelwood’s formula /: But for a YA book, I thought this was really cute for the most part, just not the most amazing thing I’ve read.
Additional Note: I adored this audiobook narrator, listen to this book if u can!!!
3.75 stars
* * *
My chess loving heart just about died!!!!I was like “oh my god a chess rom-com???!!” and then I read the description and he’s the “bad boy” of chess