As expected, Ali Hazelwood did not disappoint and, despite the enormous amount of hype I had for this book, it delivered. 

I fell in love the male main characters and all the other secondary ones, even though sometimes they drove me mad (Mal, the female main character, in first place). She indeed makes some frustrating choices at times but I personally felt represented by many of her thoughts and fears. The romance was extremely cute and heartwarming and the rival to lovers aspect was mostly from Mal’s point of view so don’t expect a real enemies to lovers. I also must say that the main focus of the novel was not on romance as much as Ali’s other books are. A lot of pages revolve around chess and the various tournaments the characters partecipate in. Nevertheless I didn’t get bored not felt like I needed to know about chess to understand what was happening.  

I particularly enjoyed the found family aspect and also the real family one that made me feel part of their group and had me tearing up in the last 50 pages when everyone was making peace and dealing with difficult topics. 

Lastly, I have to admit that, in spite of being a YA, this book has a few discussions on sex and a little spicy scene (a couple of pages not even explicit, but I thought you had to know before going in).

In conclusion, this book earned 5 stars from me and is now my second favourite book from this author (the first one being “the love hypothesis”).