this book is not bad, but i enjoyed reading it. after finishing the good girl's guide to murder trilogy, a cutesy YA romance was exactly what i needed. 

the romance was nice but nothing special. i think ali hazelwood's books have really been going downhill for me since love, theoretically. i don't understand why she had to make check & mate YA, because to me, nothing about this felt like a YA book except for the cringey writing and the age change of the characters. i feel like she just decided to make them 18 but then didn't actually put effort into creating the character of an 18 year old and truly getting inside their head. sure, mallory was immature, but all every main character in ali hazelwood's books are the exact same, and they are all fully adults. i feel like the story would have worked just fine with just a few minor changes even if they were 30. mallory also pissed me off so much; i'm sorry but if you exclude her chess abilities, she is an idiot. 

however, there were some cute parts between her and nolan that i enjoyed so it definitely wasn't all bad. he was so obsessed with her and it was lowkey adorable, there really is something to be said about someone understanding your passion and truly caring about it because you do, because they want you to be happy. also, i'd never read a romance book about chess before though, so i liked how it was a slightly new twist to a regular romance book. i don't really know anything about chess though, so i can't speak on how accurate any of the terms were.

to sum it up, it was pretty decent, but there are much better YA books out there.