This book was so lovely! Definitely something a lot of kids today could enjoy, whether they play chess or do some other activity. Kyla has an excellent voice for middle grade.

My daughter read and reviewed this one. She really enjoyed it and has read it twice. She liked how the chapters and story lined up with chess moves. She thought that was creative. The book interested her right away and she couldn't put it down.

A fun and breezy read that I finished in a few hours!

I enjoyed how the author takes us through the world of competitive chess, while also exploring themes of family, friendship and identity. May's struggles were relatable and authentic, especially how a passion can feel so different when it becomes a job, competition or livelihood. I also loved the representation and getting to know all the various characters.

While not exceptional, this was still an entertaining and illuminating middle-grade novel that many (especially young readers) will enjoy.

May Li is a 12 year old chess player with big dreams of becoming her school's chess team captain. After a win at the state championship, her team has been invited to nationals. She was featured in her favourite chess magazine for winning a trophy for being an up and coming female chess player. When her friend turned enemy Ralph also declares his interest in becoming team captain, and claims the only reason May is getting attention is because she is a girl. They wage a bet to see who is the better chess player once and for all.

I think the target audience will really love this, and May will be a very relatable character for a lot of people. I liked that it showed May being overwhelmed with her sport and the thought of needing to be a winner, even though she loved the game. I like how she had to learn to balance her love for the game and her overwhelming feelings. She had a great support system with her family and friends. I loved Becca and May's friendship was so sweet. I also liked Mario, the soccer player who May did a photoshoot with and became quick friends. I think they helped each other go through a lot of character development by the end of the story.

I found this middle grade book about a young school chess champion and how she learns to embrace the challenges that come with success in competitive sport absolutely adorable!
I was drawn to the book by the cover with its impression of a bubbly girl playing chess. That's exactly how I would describe May Li, the 12 yo protagonist.
May has loved playing chess since she was six and when she and her school team win the state finals and get picked to play the national chess championship, she is thrilled. Getting featured in her favourite chess magazine and winning a trophy for being the most promising female player are the icing on the cake. There is a flip side too however, with May's teammate and friend turned foe Ralph insisting that she's winning all these accolades only because she's a girl! Stunned, May challenges Ralph that she will prove that she is the best and deserves all the praise. Can she handle the additional pressure and the weight of expectations and do as she has promised?

I found the representation of sport and what it means to be good at it and then be overwhelmed by the constant thought of winning very age appropriate and well done. May loves chess and is willing to work hard to be good at it but she is plagued by insecurities and the fear of being loved and appreciated only for being a victor. Her journey to learn how to balance wanting to be the very best with enjoying the game itself and also making time for friends and fun in her life is a wonderful one.

I loved the emphasis on the support of parents, teachers and friends in alleviating performance anxiety. There was also a message conveyed about how girls have to justify winning and apologize for losing so much of the time because of all the stereotypical thinking about them not being as good as their male counterparts. The fact that the author also stressed that gender is irrelevant when it comes to playing the game or showing emotion about winning or losing and sexist comments of any nature should not be tolerated is great.

May and her friends are very likeable characters who come across as really authentic with their earnestness and vulnerability and, occasionally, melodrama too! May's friendship with Becca was heartwarming. Her interactions with Mario, the soccer captain with whom she does a photo campaign for the school and the way they help each other grow was so cute. The way all of these kids learn from their mistakes and make up for them was a favourite part of the book. I also liked the adult characters and the role they played in helping the kids.

A couple of things that stood out were :

1. May's spunk and her way of relating life situations to chess and vice versa and coming up with solutions to problems.

2. The chapter headings that were all chess related and made a lot of sense storywise.

I found myself wishing I knew more than the most rudimentary facts about chess so that I could have enjoyed the matches more though this didn't really affect how I felt about it! I did ask my teenager about all the various opening and defence moves named.

Overall it's a wonderful read about loving what you do while aiming to be good at it, learning to balance the joy of being at the top with accepting losses while participating in competitions and most importantly, always listening to your heart and being confident in your own abilities.

I think the target audience will love this book. I certainly did.
My thanks to the author Kyla Zhao and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC. These are my honest thoughts about the book.

It’s an invitation into the world of chess, into typical gender and sports stereotypes and into the world of May, her family and her friends as she navigates growing older with conflicting thoughts about the passion she loves. This book has something for everyone. I was completely hooked into the world of chess with the foreshadowing of each chapter with a chess term and definition. Themes of enoughness, anxiety and doing what we love were evident alongside a page-turning story of the competitive world of middle school chess. =) But the best part? The letter to readers at the end with a heartfelt message to find something you love and to hold onto that joy of playing for no reason at all, other than that you enjoy it.

May the Best Player Win caught my eye right away and I was so excited when I got my eARC. Even though it's been years since I sat down to play a game of chess, it's something I do still find interesting. It's also something I don't come across very often in books, so that made it even more interesting. Kyla Zhao gave us a unique middle grade story and it's one I won't forget.

Our main character May Li has loved chess for a few years and her middle grade team has made nationals this year. May even receives an award for being the top female player and a magazine spread in the biggest chess magazine of the country. When this happens and a friend in her chess club says she only got the trophy and spread because she's a girl, things start getting complicated for May. This felt very realistic I think for many girls, but also for children who maybe put a little too much pressure on themselves.

May the Best Player Win is about doing what you love, friendship, expectations from yourselves and others, trying new things even when it's a bit scary, and believing in yourself. It was interesting to see May start to question if she really still loved chess, but also wondering if her parents would still love her if she didn't want to play anymore. I really appreciated her parents both telling her it wasn't about her winning, but seeing her succeed in something she loved. Also, Kyla does a great job approaching the subject that girls are sometimes looked down upon when they're good at something. I think this is a great read for children. That you can do something you love and even stop when it's not fun anymore. That sometimes you just need to think of you and not worry about what others think. I really hope this author writes more middle grade stories.

My full review will also be posted on https://thebookdutchesses.com on October 12th!

This was a delightful, quick read about a girl trying to manage keeping up her love for chess as her skill improves, amidst challenges with friends and gender bias. I thought the book was fresh and cute and had a great middle grade voice and could have been a three star review... buuuuut...

Zhao did a great job of expressing gender biases in a field like chess, as well as the sneaky ways misogyny shows up. What I like is that our girl called these out, which is so hard, but it used language that young readers can use to respectfully highlight how language and actions is harmful to both girls and boys.

Fun read, almost made me want to give chess another try.

(Almost).

Congrats to this debut, look forward to the next by Zhao.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC, for which I am giving my honest review and opinion of the novel.

May Li is the top girl at her middle school state chess championship and wins a trophy for her efforts. The recognition brings more publicity, and May begins to place more pressure on herself to live up to the expectations in preparing for the national tournament. However, a jealous friend insists she only got the trophy for being a girl, fracturing her friend group. May finds herself making a new friend at school while avoiding chess in spite of her goals.

This is the book that my middle school students have been waiting for! I have lots of chess fans, but right now, Not an Easy Win by Chrystal D. Giles is the one book they pass around. This will appeal to both the girls and the boys in my classes, though some of the boys may grumble at some of the "girl power" messages delivered rather directly. Regardless, this is the book I will be recommending to my students who put too much pressure on themselves -- I think they will see themselves in May Li and enjoy how she comes to terms with the pressure.

This book is a must read for any middleThis book is a must read for any middle grader! This book deals with your typical middle grade experiences of boys, feeling misunderstood, difficulty with friendships, and misogyny. The main character, May, struggles with finding a balance with what makes her happy, being good enough, and anxiety about her future. The way the author navigated these throughout the book was eloquent and charming. grader.

I absolutely loved this book. Loved this coming of age story about a girl who just wants to play for fun. Having to deal with competition and the pressure that comes with it. Would recommend to everyone to check this out when it releases.

I was enticed to read another chess-themed book after reading Check and Mate by Ali Hazelwood, so I was glad to find May the Best Player Win by Kyla Zhao. The book is about May, an avid middle school chess player, navigating the chess world at a young age. After May achieves a chess victory and is recognized as a top female chess player at states, she starts learning how to manage the expectations and pressures that come with such titles.

I really enjoyed this book, even though I'm past the age demographic that it targets, because it reminded me so much of my own experiences in middle school, especially in STEM. I think Kyla Zhao captures the essence of middle school woes and growing up very well and delivers an excellent story that other tweens and teens can look up to. Overall, I really enjoyed this story and might reread it in a couple of years just to recapture the feeling of reading it for the first time.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House, and Kyla Zhao for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This story was well written and engaging. I read it aloud to my son and he looked forward to hearing it every night so it definitely appeals to a youth audience. The conversation between characters and the challenges they faced were reflective of this age group. I also enjoyed learning more about Asian culture.

Wow, what a poignant and fun story of a young chess player who overcomes her own imposter syndrome amongst gender bias and the self-imposed pressure that comes from feeling the need to prove one’s worthiness. Kyla calls it a love letter to her younger self, and I’d say it’s a love letter to all young girls who let go of their dreams because they are good “for a girl” or the pressure destroys what was once fun.

May gets an incredible opportunity with her chess team to compete for the first time at a state tournament, where she is the only girl to place in the top 10 and she wins an award. Her male teammate and friend, who has the same number of points, is upset that May is now getting so much attention. A magazine article, a school billboard, and a trophy - to him it is not fair. Their friendship is tested and May has to decide if she still finds joy in the game or if the pressure to prove that she actually IS worthy of the praise is too much.

May, her friends and teammates learn valuable lessons about gender bias, the importance of creating opportunity and space for women in male dominated spaces, and focusing on what matters most - doing what you enjoy.

I enjoyed this book as an adult, and it is an excellent book for a young chapter-book reader.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

May Li is not the best player in the world. She is just one of the best players at the middle school, who, like the others in the chess club, made it to the state championship. She was so excited to go, but she lost her last game, so didn’t qualify for a prize. But it turned out, because she was a girl, that she got a special prize for just participating at that level. One one hand, this felt like cheating, but on the other hand, ohh, shiny trophy.
Thus beings May’s back and forth about whether she was really a good player or not. She kept worrying that she was a fraud, and despite knowing all she knew about the game, overthinking all her moves.
What I like about this, is the thinking that goes through May’s head. And how she learns that what makes the game important is the love of the game. Yes, it is important to win, but it is also important to enjoy playing, or what is the point?
This book also has the usual misunderstood friendships, and boys, but they are all there for a purpose, and are not thrown in because they have to be there.
The author said she based May on her own life playing chess as a girl growing up. And this shows. I also like the thinking of her chess coach who tells her not to make chess her be-all and end-all. Because when you stop playing, what have you left?
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book is coming out on the 17th of September 2024.

This was an absolutely AMAZING and WHOLESOME read, the book kept me grinning and cheering on the characters throughout! This book deals very gracefully with misogyny in chess (and in general!), and honestly, it made me want to pick up chess. I loved all the friendship and family interactions, and I wouldn't happily read a 100 more pages of it 🥲

-- ty to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for an advanced copy!

This book was so cute, I absolutely loved the MC and her journey. I’m not the intended target audience and wanted to read it so I could get it for my younger cousins when it comes out and I’m so glad I did. I feel like the book was so well written and overall super enjoyable to read.