“(…)He told me once that sometimes, with some people, it’s not about winning or losing, That with some people, it’s just about playing.” – 4/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: gambits, chess plays, strategy, championships, tournaments, bratty siblings, medical bills, and grief.

Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays. After the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory’s focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious “Kingkiller” Nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning bad boy of chess.

Nolan’s loss to an unknown rook-ie shocks everyone—especially Mallory. What’s even more confusing? His desire to cross pawns again. What kind of gambit is Nolan playing? The smart move would be to walk away. Resign. Game over. But Mallory’s victory opens the door to sorely needed cash prizes and, despite everything, she can’t help feeling drawn to the enigmatic strategist….

As she rockets up the ranks, Mallory struggles to keep her family safely separated from the game that wrecked it in the first place. And as her love for the sport she so desperately wanted to hate begins to rekindle, Mallory quickly realizes that the games aren’t only on the board, the spotlight is hotter than she imagined, and the competition can be fierce(-ly attractive. And intelligent…and infuriating…)

I don’t think I’ve ever read a story with a chess theme before, so this was a very interesting and fun read to me! I enjoyed this book for the most part: it was fast-paced, there were plenty of fun situations, and I liked the chess theme very much. I also enjoyed the romance, and the situations created by the author for them to keep meeting – that was one of my favorite things about this book. Who knew chess could be so fun?
Now, with that said, I didn’t rate this book higher because there were two main things about the story that I didn’t like that much. The first one, and the worst, in my opinion, is the constant sex talk. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude and I’ve read plenty of young adult romances that had sex scenes or sex talk, and that didn’t bother me in the slightest… but this book was on another level. It was uncomfortable to read at times because not only they were constantly talking about it, but the weirdest part was that even her younger sibling (who is 12 years old btw) was also part of the conversation – and even initiated it at times. She kept taunting Mallory about her sexual experience and preferences, and even told the male lead about her sister’s sex life… and it’s just uncomfortable to read. This is probably my least favorite thing about this book! I just think it was unnecessary to the story.
Another thing I didn’t love about this book was Mallory’s personality. She’s not the worst character I’ve ever encountered in YA romance, but it’s funny how she tries to portray herself as a responsible young adult… while being very immature! She has a massive victim mentality and she keeps telling the readers that she is responsible for the demise of her family – which, spoiler alert, she is not. It just got tiring and I kept rolling my eyes while she kept whining. Again, not the worst character ever, but very annoying and difficult to empathize with at times.
This is not exactly related to the story itself, but I thought I mention it here: the author added a note at the end of the book – that I highly recommend reading if you’re reading this book -, where she talks about how chess is mainly a male-dominated sport and how there is a lot of gender inequality. I had no idea! I was very surprised to know that there are separate tournaments for men’s and women’s chess. I thought this was very interesting and insightful knowledge, and I’m glad the author decided to share it with the readers to give some perspective.
If you ask me if I thought the book was realistic, I would tell you the truth: I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about chess, so I can’t tell you if the story is accurate compared to real life or not. But if I had to guess, I would say it’s not the most believable story because the main character is a teenager who hasn’t played chess for a while… but she’s very talented to the point that she beats trained players like it’s nothing. That to me is a little hard to believe, but who knows? Also, it’s not that serious, this is fiction after all!
Overall, I liked this book. It’s not a perfect book by any means, but the story was entertaining and I had fun reading it. I probably wouldn’t recommend this to a younger audience – like pre-teens and younger – because of the reason I mentioned before. Don’t be fooled by the cover like I was!