Nolan and his friends were honestly the best part of this book. Mallory was too much under a rock at times. Quite oblivious to things that were practically staring her in the face. It's also weird to me how she doesn't have any academic prowess with being so analytical about chess. Although, I've never played chess and don't know anything about it, it did seem sus to me how her intellect wasn't spoken about.

I had picked this book up soon after its release but had paused it to read at a later date. Now, that really did take a long while. I thought I would find it hard getting into this book because I don't know chess and I like being somewhat knowledgeable when a book takes a deep dive into a subject like this. Surprisingly, my lack of knowledge didn't stop me from reading the book this time round. I actually enjoyed it! May even learn chess at a later date and come back to this book to understand it better.

Also, it caught me off-guard when Jungkook was name-dropped. I don't know if Ali is into kpop or she did this for clout-purposes or if it was just a casual thing. I've not seen many white authors talk about south korean artists is all.

On another note, Mallory's "best friend" really got on my nerves. I would rather have her cut her off than to think that "oh, i could have reached out more." This book wasn't wow but I did stay up late to finish it the very day I started it and when you're trying to get out of reading slump, this is a huge deal! I would have loved it if the ending wasn't so rushed. I think a few more chapters wouldn't have hurt anyone.

This is the lowest rating I've ever given to an Ali Hazelwood book. It doesn't feel like it was written by her? It's rooted in misogyny and I absolutely hated it. I've also never read anything in the omegaverse before so I found the words beta, alpha and omega quite overused. I found myself being annoyed at multiple parts of this book. I think I would have dnf'd the book had it not been a novella. It seems funny to me how a person goes from writing about women in stem to...this. Even the parts that were supposed to be emotional felt very superficial. Also, the characters had no depth in them. Throughout this book, the only thing I did feel apart from annoyance was apathy.