REVIEW I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver

 

This book satisfies two of my challenges: the Popsugar Challenge (book where there is a non binary or trans main character) and the Library Love challenge.  I loved this book and I loved that this was the sort of book that Mason Deaver needed when they were a teenager.  So wonderful for me too.  I feel like I learned a lot. The literary world is so much better because this book is here.

I knew that I would love this book when it made me cry in the first few chapters.  It is absolutely nightmarish but not in your face or over the top and it was that subtleness that really got me. Ben DeBecker has been kicked out of his home at Christmas time after coming out to his conservative parents about being non-binary.  He luckily is able to call his older sister, Hannah, who is estranged and had left right after graduating from high school. She jumps into action and picks him up, gets him enrolled in school and gets him a (good) therapist. Ben spends the first part of the book in fear that they will be outed, rejected and have to return to the terrible environment that they were in previously. However, he has a lot of support and some bright lights - Mariam is a non binary social influencer that is very supportive of Ben and Nathan, a young man that Ben meets at his new school. 

This was a very compelling story that captured me and moved quickly. It is so effective in establishing that young, non-binary (or even anyone that has a sexual or gender orientation that is different from what the dominant society says is "normal,") are always experiencing a baseline level of fear and stress - nothing is ever seemingly safe in their world. Every word, action and look is second guessed.  Are they going to be outed? Is the person that learns of their gender or sexual expression going to accept them or be violent or something in between? What would be considered normal questions, are not necessarily normal questions to Ben - they are still trying to figure themselves out and then they have to figure out the world around them, all the while being a teen. 

When I put this book down, I felt much more emotionally and intellectually intelligent. I learned about the non-binary landscape all the while enlightening me on an experience that I never had and helping me to have compassion for people that are going through these difficult transitions in their own lives. I adored this book and would recommend it highly.