I Wish You All the Best: Book Review

I Wish You All the Best plot summary

Ben knew their parents weren’t likely to respond well when they came out as nonbinary. They weren’t expecting to be cast out onto the street. With no keys, no money, no shoes, Ben doesn’t have many options. They do the only thing they can think of, calling the sister they haven’t spoken to in a decade to ask for help. Suddenly in a new home, and a new school, all Ben wants is to keep their head down and finish school. Enter Nathan Allan, charming, irrepressibly friendly and determined to make Ben engage with their new surroundings. Nathan might be about to throw a wrench in Ben’s plans for a quiet life, but that might not be an entirely bad thing.

Content warnings:

• Transphobia
• Homophobia
• Misgendering
• Child abuse

My thoughts on I Wish You All the Best

I wish you all the best, by Mason Deaver, is an own-voices coming-out, coming-of-age story with a slow-burn romantic sub-plot. It’s got some tough moments, it’s not a particularly fun or fluffy book, but it’s also sweet at points. It begins with the protagonist, Ben, coming out as nonbinary to their parents. And it’s a disaster. Their dad is furious, their mum capitulates immediately to her husband’s fury. Before you know it, Ben’s out on the street, and short on options. They get in touch with Hannah, their sister, who left home ten years ago. The siblings haven’t spoken since, until now.

Hannah takes Ben home and introduces them to her husband Thomas (who’s never so much as spoken to another member of Hannah’s family). They get Ben enrolled in the school Thomas teaches at, which involves making some choices. Ben decides not to come out at school; all they want is to fly as far under the radar as possible.

On their first day they’re introduced to Nathan Allan, who pretty much right away makes it his mission to befriend the new kid. This, despite absolutely zero encouragement from Ben. And so begins the book.

The depiction of mental health is interesting

Ben’s dealing with an anxiety disorder, which has obviously only been made worse by their parents’ behaviour. Although the book doesn’t address it up-front, I think they’re probably depressed as well. The book feels pretty flat, and I think the flatness of the narration fits with the issues Ben is struggling with. They’re unhappy and having a really hard time. On the other hand, it did make it hard for me to feel emotionally invested in the story.

I definitely cared about Ben and wanted them to be happy. I obviously thought the way their parents treated them was horrendous. On the other hand, I didn’t feel that close to Ben, not compared to, say, the characters in Frankly In Love or Clap When You Land – two other YA books that don’t shy away from challenging topics. Or The Midnight Library, if it makes more sense to compare it to another book where the protagonist is struggling with serious mental health issues.

Probably due in large part to their mental health, Ben was a very passive protagonist. They were pushed (usually very gently!) from one plot point to another. I don’t think a passive protagonist is always a disaster in fiction. But it definitely contributed to my feeling that I never really got to know Ben.

I wish some of the therapy storyline had been handled differently in I Wish You All The Best

Additionally, I had very mixed feelings about the representation of therapy in the book. At first I liked it. Ben was wary about going to therapy, and I thought the way the therapist dealt with that made sense. And I really appreciated the fact that therapy wasn’t treated as a quick fix.

Where I struggled more was when Ben was given medication, and there was remarkably little examination of that. I was curious about how they felt about being on meds, the impact the medication had on their state of mind. When they said the medication didn’t seem to be having much effect, the therapist just upped their dosage without any more conversation about that, which felt off to me. And the medication didn’t seem to serve a purpose within the story – as a vehicle for recovery, or a factor in Ben’s anxiety, or anything. It felt irrelevant, and really poorly explored, in a way that bothered me while I was reading.

Some of the characters and plot threads felt a bit thin

It wasn’t just Ben whose characterisation didn’t grab me; a lot of the characters felt pretty poorly drawn. Nathan made an impression, and I’ll come back to him momentarily, but he had these two friends whose names I had literally forgotten about half an hour after finishing the book. They felt very vague, and not particularly important.

To be clear, I loved Nathan. Nathan was a definite bright spot in the story. His determination to befriend Ben seemed a bit odd at times, since Ben was all but actively hostile to some of the overtures Nathan made! But he stuck at it, and with such effortless charm that it was impossible not to like him. The romance between them is pretty clearly set up in the blurb, but it takes a long time to come into play. I wish we could have had more of that storyline, honestly. Ben and Nathan were very cute together.

A few plot elements felt underdeveloped to me. For example; Ben’s relationship with their sister, Hannah, was this tension kind of simmering away underneath their day-to-day interactions. The author set it up in a really interesting way, and I wanted to see that really dug into. It wasn’t completely ignored, to be fair! But I wasn’t really satisfied by the way and extent to which it did play out.

Another example for me was Ben’s nonbinary friend, Mariam. Mariam was fascinating! They have a significant YouTube following, which they use to speak to young people struggling with their gender identities. Despite this, Mariam’s main role seemed to be to tell Ben to do stuff so that the plot could progress. I’d have liked to know more about Mariam, their journey and feelings – rather than just having them be a sporadic vehicle for plot advacement.

I Wish You All The Best is an interesting book, but it didn’t wow me

This was the first book I’ve read with a nonbinary protagonist, so even if just for that reason I’m glad I read it. It provided a window into a perspective that I haven’t seen represented much in fiction, and I think there’s real value in that.

The book didn’t really grab me, in all honesty. Part of that was my issues with the way the therapy storyline evolved over the course of the book, part of it was that the narration felt like it kept me at arm’s-length from the protagonist. But I know a lot of this is going to be personal preference, and I don’t want to put off other people from reading I Wish You All The Best if it’s intriguing them!

Have you read I Wish You All The Best? Did you feel the same as me, or did you enjoy some of the elements I struggled with? Let me know in the comments!

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