A
Ali Hazelwood
Italian neuroscientist and writer of romance novels.
Check & Mate
Synopsis
Mallory Greenleaf swore off chess years ago. The game was her father's passion, and after it became tangled up with the collapse of her family, she walked away and hasn't touched a board since. Now eighteen, she works to help support her mother and sisters and has no intention of looking back, until she is talked into playing a charity tournament and, to everyone's surprise including her own, dismantles the reigning world champion, Nolan Sawyer.
That upset thrusts Mallory into the elite, high-pressure world of competitive chess, where the prize money could genuinely change her family's fortunes, and where the intense, guarded Nolan keeps turning up. As she rises through the rankings, Mallory has to weigh her old wounds against a talent she can't deny and a growing pull toward the one opponent who truly sees her.
Ali Hazelwood's first young-adult novel, Check & Mate, brings her signature banter and slow-burn tension to the chess circuit. It is a warm, funny story about grief, family obligation, and letting yourself want something again.
Genres
Characters
Mallory GreenleafProtagonist
Eighteen-year-old first-person narrator, a former chess prodigy working as an auto mechanic in New Jersey to support her mother and two younger sisters.
Nolan SawyerProtagonist
The reigning world chess champion, nicknamed the Kingkiller; intense and guarded, and Mallory's opponent turned love interest.
Malte KochAntagonist
A top-ranked player who uses sexist needling against Mallory on the tournament circuit.
Darcy GreenleafSupporting
Mallory's youngest sister.
Defne BubikoğluSupporting
Grandmaster who runs the Zugzwang chess club in New York and offers Mallory the scholarship that pulls her back into competition.
Goodreads Choice Award (2023)Green Mountain Book Award (2025)Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award (2025)She Reads Best of Award (2023)
Frequently asked questions
What inspired Ali Hazelwood to write this book?
The story is invented, not based on real events. Hazelwood has said she learned chess young — her primary school in Italy ran mandatory tournaments every year — but was never a strong player, and that what drew her to the subject was professional players themselves: "mostly because of the discipline and dedication necessary to rise to the top, and I'd been wanting to write a story centering them for a while." In the book's epilogue she also traces it to the psychological concept of stereotype threat, which she first came across in 2008 and later found applied in a study of chess. She chose to write it as young adult because the characters "needed to be at a delicate stage in their lives, where they had to make important decisions about their futures."
Does this book connect to the author's other novels?
While it shares the author's signature style of banter and focus on women navigating male-dominated fields, it is a standalone story and does not require knowledge of her other works.