By Ali Hazelwood
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2023. 352 pages. YA Fiction.
When eighteen-year-old Mallory begrudgingly agrees to return to chess in one last charity tournament, her surprise upset against Nolan Sawyer, the reigning world champ and bad boy of the chess world, sets her on a whirlwind adventure as she rediscovers her passion for the game.
As someone who doesn’t read a lot of YA or romance, this YA romance was a pleasant surprise! Ali Hazelwood is best known for her adult romance novels, with this being her first young adult novel. However, I did not know it was young adult until I was later informed and I don’t think I could have guessed it was even after reading. The line between YA and Adult is sometimes blurry, which can be frustrating for some readers who have preferences for certain content. I always recommend readers to check content warnings if there are certain topics that want to be avoided. There are adult themes throughout the book. All in all, I think it was a very fun read! The romance was sweet, although our main protagonist is pretty flawed which can be frustrating at times. I have never paid attention to the world of chess (and I still won’t), but it was fun to take a peak behind the curtain and experience a whole new world of competition and strategy.
If you like Check & Mate, you might also like:
By Sayantani DasGupta
Scholastic Inc., 2022. 303 pages. YA Fiction.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are two types of people in the hypercompetitive world of high school forensics competitions: speakers and debaters. Nobody knows this better than Leela Bose, a life-long speech competitor. When she meets Firoze Darcy, an incorrigible debater, Leela has no choice but to try and tolerate him. But why simply tolerate Firoze when Leela can one-up him? She decides to switch into the debate category of the competition to prove that women are just as capable as men. But the situation is more complicated than Leela anticipated, and her participation in the tournament reveals that she might have tragically misjudged the debaters in the forensics league -- including Firoze Darcy. Leela will have to confront her assumptions, not only about other people, but about herself, if she's to have any hope of deciphering her complicated feelings for Darcy or succeeding in the forensics competition.
By Alexene Farol Follmuth
Holiday House, 2022. 266 pages. YA Fiction.
High school senior Bel Maier has an aptitude for engineering and teams up with robotics team captain, Mateo Luna, but after a rough start together the nights of after-school work lead to romance.
By Racquel Marie
Feiwel and Friends, 2023. 376 pages. YA Fiction.
Seventeen-year-old Valentina jeopardizes her future when she gets into an altercation with her rival, Leticia, during a soccer game, so the two girls must co-captain a soccer team to redeem themselves and what starts as a shaky alliance of necessity blossoms into something more.
LA
No comments:
Post a Comment