Check & Mate (by Ali Hazelwood)

More college-age than truly young adult (I've heard this called "new adult") and a good read about a chess rivalry. This is one I kept checking out and letting lapse because the cover is juvenile and just not appealing.  But the book is much more sophisticated than the cover would suggest.

Mallory is a chess prodigy who quit the sport after some unspecified trauma with her deceased father. She now takes care of her mother (who is chronically ill) and her two younger sisters by working under the table as a car mechanic.  Until she is drafted to play in a chess competition and beats the #1 player in the world, who is of course a hot chess prodigy.

I enjoyed: the dialogue, the relationship of the sisters, the bisexual and sex-positive representation. Less effective: I felt the "best friend" owed her an apology at the end and that never got resolved, and I can see how the ending might feel a bit unsatisfying.  But overall I enjoyed it.

Dungeons and Drama (by Kristy Boyce)

I have a little backlog of YA novels on my library checkout list that I'm trying to read through before they expire. This was a cute one about a theater nerd who starts working in her dad's game store and learns about the theatrical joys of D&D (she is a bard who sings showtunes to inspire her fellow players).  

This does lean on the fake dating trope but honestly it's handled pretty well! At first I wasn't sure about the characters but I ended up loving them. There were a few weird moments (DMs do accents all the time! No self-respecting theater fan would call Les Miz a perfect movie!) but this was squarely in my wheelhouse and I enjoyed it a lot.

Finally Fitz (by Marisa Kanter)

Just a queer YA that hits perfectly. Our main character is bisexual and an aspiring fashion designer and influencer in New York for the first time. She is dumped by her girlfriend and reconnects with an old friend from her youth. Fake relationship shenanigans ensue.

All that said, this doesn't really hit the cliche beats you'd expect, and I super appreciated that! There's a storyline about Fitz and her (much older) trio of sisters that is really beautiful, and I cried at the end because of All The Feels about Fitz, her relationships, her sisters, etc. etc.  Super well done and a home run for YA romcom fans.

A Pair of Mysteries

A friend and I got to talking about mysteries we like; we're both fans of Agatha Christie-style fair play mysteries and not so much modern thrillers.  I recommended some Japanese mysteries to him and he talked about some Golden Age writers I might enjoy, like Ellery Queen. So we exchanged recs.

The Greek Coffin Mystery (by Ellery Queen)

Like Agatha Christie, this has not aged well. Sexism, racism, some really awful ableism.  I also didn't much like the writing style. I kept reading because I wanted to give it a fair shake and hear the solution to the mystery, which is clever, and fooled me, which as you know I always enjoy.  But it's really hard to get past the writing, which is depressingly Of Its Time and like I said, not even that good. I think I'll move on from Queen (the nom de plume, by the way, of two cousins, who wrote these books) and try a different Golden Age writer next.

Malice (by Keigo Higashino)

Coincidentally, this popped up on my library holds list, by the author of The Devotion of Suspect X, which I enjoyed. Well Malice was even better! A Whydunit that manages to be so suspenseful, I finished it all in one day.  Now this one, I really recommend. Japanese mysteries are really a goldmine. I'm hoping my friend enjoys my rec, The Decagon House Murders, and if so, I'll tell him to read Malice next.