For the Students

Check and Mate is the story of an eighteen-year-old girl named Mallory Greenleaf. Four years ago, chess was considered her whole life…that was until it tore her family apart. Flash forward to the present, she’s stuck with a crappy job at a car garage with no plans to go to college. Drowning in her mother’s medical bills while trying to pay the mortgage, she also takes care of her two little sisters. Her best friend is off to college, but as a last hurrah, she asks her to play in a chess tournament for charity. Begrudgingly, she accepts the offer. When she arrives she realizes her first opponent is none other than Nolan Sawyer. The number one ranked chess player in the world. In just a few moves, somehow she has him beat! Flustered and confused, she runs away before he can even get a word out. Soon enough, she’s being asked to play chess professionally, but chess is totally out of her life. Especially if Nolan Sawyer will be there…right? I would like to preface by saying that I had very high expectations for this novel because of reading some of Ali Hazelwood’s other rom-coms. (Specifically The Love Hypothesis). Going into this book I thought chess would of course be a main component considering it’s how the two characters meet each other and share an interest in it. While reading the book I felt that chess overshadowed the actual rom-com part of the story. The book mainly revolved around chess games and it almost felt like romance was a secondary subject. Mallory is a character who has a lot of bottled-up feelings and keeps making mistakes and pushing people she loves away. She was a problematic character of sorts but pulled through at the end when she fixed everything between everyone she loved and started to heal from her past. Nolan Sawyer is charming, sweet, and really good for Mal. He is super patient with Mal and tries to understand what she’s going through. He’s really great with her sisters and makes it apparent that he likes Mal from the very beginning. The characters did have some very sweet, swoon-worthy moments with each other. I think the two characters balanced each other out but I wish Hazelwood wrote more about them when they were at their best. The ending felt a bit rushed and readers never really got a chance to read about what happened after the two made up. It explains what the characters go on to do with their lives, but it’s not from their point of view which is something I would have changed about the ending. I wanted to hear more from Mal and Nolan. I did get a better understanding of chess while reading this novel, and it was very interesting to see how intense the training is to be a professional chess player. Overall, it’s a quick and cute read if you’re looking to get into reading it’s a pretty good book to start with. 

Sachertorte is a German-made romantic comedy, released in 2022, starring Max Hubacher and Maeve Metelka as the lead actors. It follows the journey of the main character, Karl, chasing the love of his life by spending every day at Vienna café, Café Sacher, waiting for his love. On his journey, he meets another, who may be the actual love of his life, Miriam. Vienna was a sparkling gem of a backdrop to the movie. It is a wonderful masterpiece of romance and comedy. It is a magnificent ballad of internal struggle and love. I found that Hubacher’s performance of a lovestruck, confused, TV writer was an amazing piece of his career. This performance by Hubacher may have topped his best performance before of Willi Herold in The Captain, 2017. As his anger and internal struggle progresses, will he figure out who he loves, or when love strikes him, will he miss it? I guess you’ll have to watch the movie for yourself to find out.