A review by roxanned
I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver

emotional hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Ben De Backer's story is necessary and important. It is also emotional and beautiful. 

In this book important topics
like identity, sexuality, family, therapy, anxiety and how to recover from a terrible event
are addressed respectfully and in a way everyone can understand them. It is about
what it means to be nonbinary, people being different than expected and different types of love (among other things)
.
I'm not nonbinary so it's not my place to say something about the quality of Ben's representation. The intentional imperfect portrait of their support system seems realistic though. Hannah, Thomas and Nathan are trying their best but also make mistakes
with pronouns and other gendered words
. It is one of the possible situations that could happen in real life.

Deaver calls attention to things that make Ben uncomfortable
like gendered clothing, gendered toiletries, coming out
, which shouldn't be an issue in modern society but they still are. Thus, the book invites reflection and discussion.

Overall a cute and meaningful story, that isn't romance heavy but has a lot to do with love.
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