I Wish You All the Best Book Review

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I Wish You All the Best concerns Ben De Backer, a high-school student whose life is turned upside down when they come out to their parents as nonbinary, and as a result, are thrown out of the house. With nowhere else to turn, Ben asks their older sister Hannah (who they haven’t seen or spoken to in almost a decade) for help, and moves in with her and her husband. Joining a new school and trying to keep a low profile in order to get to graduation with as little upheaval as possible, Ben finds themselves taken under the wing of fellow student Nathan Allan. Nathan is charming, funny, and although Ben at first is reluctant to let Nathan in, as they spend more time together, Ben realises that Nathan may be exactly what they need in their life.

In terms of the actual plot, I loved this book for its imperfect portrayal of romance and friendship and our protagonist just doing their best to get through it all. Ben and Nathan were both compelling and intriguing, and both had realistic features to their personality, while also having enough quirky and intruiging characteristics that I wanted them to be my friends too! And I like that in novels – I want the characters to be plausible, but at the same time, interesting enough that they’d be someone I’d want to be friends with in real life too.

As a protagonist, it was difficult to watch Ben constantly encounter new heartaches and having to live every day constantly considering the possibility they may have to come out to someone, and then being reminded of what happened with their parents, and the pain that caused. In my description at the top, I included a fair few trigger warnings because I can understand why someone reading this (and experiencing similar circumstances) would find it very triggering. However, I liked the way that Deaver showed Ben go through these harmful and hurtful experiences, but showed them getting through the other side as well. Ben’s relationship with their parents is heart-breaking to read, but there are some relationships in this book (such as the one they regain with their sister) which are heart-warming to read as well. The book was difficult, and yet exuded a lot of love and hope too.

Obviously this book is very important for nonbinary representation, but more than that, this narrative was so great at showing such a human, and imperfect perspective of what this experience can be like. Being cisgender, I cannot comment on the truthfulness of this portrayal, however, I can attest to it being very educational, especially if you’ve not read any books with nonbinary characters as the protagonist before.

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When I finished this book, I felt almost a relief knowing that Ben, for now (and because there were no more pages left of the book) was safe. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that throughout, I wanted nothing more than to wrap Ben in bubblewrap and take away some of their pain – a pain seemingly attacking them from just about every angle. I enjoyed the book because the characters were equally detestable and loveable and I loved the relationships Deaver created, but more than that, and as I’ve spoken about in my other posts, it’s really important to read books which portray experiences different from your own, and I would happily delve back into this world, or any others Deaver creates.