Trigger warnings: Emotional abuse and talk of physical abuse
Synopsis: 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.
Review: I Wish You all the Best is the highly anticipated debut novel by Mason Deaver. We follow Ben who comes out to their parents about being non-binary and, in response, their parents kick them out. The emotional abuse in this book is largely from this moment. We see Ben deal with the fallout of being kicked out of their house throughout the story, and we see more interactions between them and their parents. Ben does make some friends at their new school. One of their friends is Nathan, who eventually becomes a love interest. I loved seeing Ben and Nathan interact. They had such a sweet friendship and, even though I knew they would end up together, I wanted to savor every interaction they had with each other.
There were a lot of story elements I loved about I Wish You All the Best. We seen Ben going to therapy which is always nice to see, but there's also conversations about trying different therapists to find the right one for you. That is definitely a conversation we need to see more of. We get to see Ben wrestle with whether or not college is the right next step for them. Again, that's a conversation we really need to see more of. Especially since America seems to have a weird relationship with higher education. This has been on a lot of people's favorite books list since it came out and I understand why. It didn't quite reach that level with me, mostly because I wanted more from Ben's relationship with their online friend, Mariam. I like that we get to see them meet in I Wish You All the Best but, as someone with cherished internet friends, I wanted more than 20 or so pages of them interacting face-to-face. I'm also not really sure how I feel about Mason putting the names of people they actually knows in this book. I'm all for including friends in stories, but I had a hard time detaching Shauna, Mariam, and Meleika from what I've seen on their actual twitter accounts. I just think this is a harder thing to pull off in a contemporary book versus a dystopian or fantasy story.
Great story, but I wanted a little more out of it. Definitely going to keep an eye out for anything else Mason writes.
4 howls
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