Buddy Read: I Wish You All the Best

It’s here. Our last buddy read (for now at least). It is probably safe to say that neither me nor Anna have had a stellar time here. We were hugely disappointed by the first one, Anna couldn’t even finish the second, and I didn’t enjoy the third at all. So, a lot has been riding on this book to make up for all that.

Read on to find out if our high hopes were met!

I Wish You All the Best

Mason Deaver

Goodreads

Rep: bi nonbinary mc (ownvoices), black bi li
TWs: transphobia, child abuse, panic attacks

When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they’re thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met. Struggling with an anxiety disorder compounded by their parents’ rejection, they come out only to Hannah, Thomas, and their therapist and try to keep a low profile in a new school.

But Ben’s attempts to survive the last half of senior year unnoticed are thwarted when Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As Ben and Nathan’s friendship grows, their feelings for each other begin to change, and what started as a disastrous turn of events looks like it might just be a chance to start a happier new life.

At turns heartbreaking and joyous, I Wish You All the Best is both a celebration of life, friendship, and love, and a shining example of hope in the face of adversity.

Anna’s Review

Rating: 4/5 🌈

Things I loved:

One. Nathan.

Two. Romance isn’t actually the main focus here. Sure, it’s there, it’s hard to miss (unless you’re as oblivious as Ben), it’s beautiful & soft. But it’s not what the book is about. It doesn’t try to play it off as Nathan saving Ben, because they don’t need that, they can save themself through hard work & standing up for what’s important to them.

Three. Not the relationship Ben had with their parents, but the way it was handled by the narrative. I don’t want to spoil anything, but this was the only way of going about this that I could accept & I’m so happy about that!

Four. The fact that almost no one but the mc was white. I thought this was a really good way of writing poc rep from a position of a white author – not talking over people whose struggles we know nothing about, but simply showing that they are in the world.

Five. The writing itself is actually really good, the pacing is excellent, the whole thing is just… a Blessing.

My decision to start the review with “things I loved” makes it seem like there is a number of things I hated. But there aren’t. I actually can’t think of anything I would want to be handled differently… Honestly, it’s just such a tender book! A great way to (almost) close Pride for me this year.

Charlotte’s Review

Rating: 3/5 🌈

This is a weird one. I did like it, I liked Ben and Nathan and Hannah and Thomas, I liked the writing (for once). I liked the book. But I didn’t feel a lot of things about it. And part of that I think is that I’m not the demographic for this book, which is fine, I expected that in a way. For the right person, this is going to be a great book.

So. Things I liked.

One. The writing! YA contemporary as a genre is full of writing that’s so often hit-and-miss for me, it was nice to get a readable book.

Two. Ben and Nathan’s relationship was great, I loved them both a lot.

Three. The fact that it actually accepts that not everyone likes to use the q-slur as a blanket term, even if it then went on to do that repeatedly (because Ben themself uses it in that way), it’s nice to see that presented in a book.

Four. It presents therapy as a good option, and the therapist is a properly professional one (so many times you see therapists in YA literally break with the ethics of the profession). I say this because there’s a little bit of a trend among YA author twitter to talk in the sense of “why do therapy when twitter’s there” like you’re not going to be building a bad opinion of it in your young readers. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Five. Linked to that, it mentions how self-diagnosis isn’t always a good thing. And (talking as a psychologist here) that’s another viewpoint that’s refreshing to read almost.

So yeah. Ultimately, it was one that I liked, but not as much as I wanted to.

So, that’s our last buddy read for the month.

Did you read along with us? What did you think?

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