A review by arielml
The Best Man by Richard Peck

3.0

When I first started this book, it annoyed me, because it opened supposedly from the perspective of a six-year-old but sounded like an adult man. (Maybe this frustration was especially strong because I had just finished another YA book, Marilyn Hilton's excellent "Full Cicada Moon," that did a really good job of making the child narrator's voice authentic.) But as I kept reading, and Archer got older, I began to like the book more. It still felt like an adult telling a child's story, but I got used to it. The characters were genuine and likeable, and there were some laugh-out-loud moments. The book also does a nice, if somewhat superficial, job of addressing homophobia. (What I mean by superficial is that homophobia comes up as an issue, but is relatively quickly resolved; it doesn't seem to be a deep-seated prejudice in the community that requires much work to overcome.)