I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver
(2019) 329 pages

Final Rating: 6/10

This was a pretty good book that explored many positive themes that everyone should know about, but there are still many places where it fell short as a fiction novel.

First, one of the things I liked in this book was the depiction of toxic parents. In this case, Ben’s parents kicks them out for being nonbinary (Ben uses they/them pronouns) and then tries to reconcile with them and even asks them to come back home. What’s worse is that they use many gaslighting techniques on them and even confuse Ben by reminding them about what a good family they were. Ben’s parents were controlling and strict, and to prevent anything from seeming like their fault, they normally lied or insisted on something to confuse others, especially their children. This is only one of the techniques they use, which is why Ben’s older sister ran away from home and Ben decided not to go back to them after they kicked them out. 

Gaslighting is used in many toxic relationships, and I think that this book showed a good depiction of it from the victim’s (Ben’s) perspective.

Second, there is a good representation of the LGBTQ+ community, even regarding the “little” things such as whether some people mind using the word “queer” or not. People need to understand that people are just people. If you saw someone of the LGBTQ+ community who did something morally unjust, do not stereotype that one person or group to the whole community. There are a ton of people that you won’t even realize are part of the LGBTQ+ community, like Ben, who was misgendered a lot throughout this book because of how they looked and acted. Ben was just a normal student who just happened to be nonbinary. That’s it.

Third, I liked how mental health was introduced and used throughout this book following Ben’s panic attacks, anxiety, and depression. The readers will (hopefully) learn that Ben’s mental health came from somewhere and from some people: their parents and the home that they used to live in. The symptoms of Ben’s mental health were also shown and were pretty realistic.

Fourth, I didn’t like Ben’s character completely. They reminded me a lot of Darius in Darius the Great is Not Okay. Sometimes, Ben wouldn’t ask their friends any questions about themselves or was not very helpful in moving any conversations forward, which did irritate me a little. I believe that for healthy relationships to occur, both people must meet up halfway. There must be an effort from both people to create a good, loving relationship. So it did bother me when Ben suddenly made some new friends despite how indifferent they were to bonding, mostly because it just wasn’t that realistic. Making friends is really hard (from someone who has experienced friendship rejection).

Fifth, because Ben doesn’t ask many questions about other people, I felt like there wasn’t much depth in any of the side characters. I don’t even know what Hannah looks like or what Sophie’s favorite thing to do is. I also felt like it was weird to have Nathan be so popular or well-liked, but not have any conversations with anyone else except the few characters that we know. I wanted to see Ben fight for their friendship with Nathan, not having Nathan do all the heavy lifting in their relationship. But that’s what happened for most, if not all, of the book.

Sixth, there were some grammatical errors throughout the book. They’re pretty minor so I won’t focus too much on them. I just felt like I had to put that out there.

So in all, this book was okay, but not great.