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A review by joinreallife
May the Best Man Win by Z.R. Ellor
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
3.5
Most important thing to know about this book is that it is not a romcom. I think the kind of framing around it of dating to exes to enemies to lovers made me think that, and it was not something that was explicitly used as marketing language, but I want to clarify for anyone else who might have made the same inference based on the tropes and the cover. Which is so interesting, because some of my favourite adult romances have illustrated covers and that's never been an indication to me that they're "just fluff" and devoid of serious things. In fact, kind of the opposite..
Boy howdy, this book was tough. There is A LOT of trauma represented here. And also, a really important look at identity and how messy and shitty teenagers are, and about internalized and socialized gender roles, and communication, and community. Jeremy and Lukas are both in their senior year at what essentially seems to be a prep school. There's lots of alumni-backed money specifically for Homecoming, and the whole book centers around the lead-up to the big game/dance. They used to date. Jeremy came out as trans recently, he breaks up with Lukas in a pretty drastic way (on the day of Lukas' brother's funeral) for reasons that are unclear to Lukas, now they're mortal enemies and are competing for the role of Homecoming King. Even before they were dating, they had been best friends for a really long time, so they have a lot of the same friends, and there's approximately a metric shit-ton of drama that ensues. Lukas is also grappling with being autistic but not wanting anyone at school to know about that, so rather than ask for accommodations for his disability, he decides to cheat. (I've seen some criticisms that the autism rep only comes up with relevance to Lukas' schoolwork, but it's pretty obvious to me that a big part of the miscommunications that happen are people expecting Lukas to pick up on social cues that he has trouble reading, and them getting upset when he doesn't get it. So that criticism doesn't really hold water to me, but I'm also not an autistic reviewer, so I can't speak 100% to that.)
If you are a person who needs to like the main characters to enjoy a book, I would think twice about this one. Then again, if you are a person who doesn't remember what it was like to be in high school...I mean, I don't know anyone who was perfectly likeable in high school. Though I have not been a trans boy in high school, I have been a post-trauma kid in high school, imagining that I should hurt other people before they have a chance to hurt me. I found that so relatable. I ALSO was the kid who covered immense sadness with anger because anger is an easier, more familiar emotion to deal with. Was Jeremy truly terrible to people who he claimed were friends? Yes. Is there really a satisfactory resolution to that, or a true reckoning for Jeremy about how incredibly self-centered he is? Not really. But one of the most interesting aspects of this book to me was the kind of overcorrection that Jeremy feels he has to do to convince everyone that he's a boy, which feels like the root of so much of his hurtful behavior. Imagining how it must feel to have something that feels so obvious to you be something you need to convince people of, that you have to constantly defend...I understand where the overcorrection comes from. So in order to make sure that people see him as a guy, Jeremy adopts some aspects of toxic masculinity, telling himself he has to do certain things because "that's what a guy would do" AND to distance himself from anything that might be seen as "feminine" because there's always the risk that people will think that he's not serious about being trans. Ellor mirrors that with a class assignment where Jeremy has to create a persuasive speech about a particular hot topic, and his is trans rights. Yikes. That was so devastating to read, honestly, that any trans person but a teenager especially has to spend their brain power worrying about that stuff rather than just being an idiot kid.
There were a couple of things that brought it down a star(ish) in my mind. I think the ending resolved too quickly for my tastes, and there were a number of things that didn't really get wrapped up as a result. The treatment of the "side characters" felt pretty crummy, they really only exist as vehicles for Jeremy and Lukas and not as people in their own right (though I would love to read a book about whatever's going on with Sol and Naomi), and I didn't love that. It could have been a really great opportunity for found family and queer community, and I think that Ellor was trying to elicit that feel, but since it wasn't the A (or B or C) plot, it didn't really develop in the way that I would have liked to see. Lukas' realization that he's not straight was less an epiphany and more of a throwaway, which felt strange to me, but I suppose that's how it might be for some folks when they're realizing their sexuality (though it wasn't for me) and it's true that there were about a fafillion other things happening in his life. I do think there was, like, one thing too many for me here, but overall, I'm glad to have read it and I can already tell it's one that I'm going to be thinking about it often.
Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Children's Publishing Group/Roaring Brook Press for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Boy howdy, this book was tough. There is A LOT of trauma represented here. And also, a really important look at identity and how messy and shitty teenagers are, and about internalized and socialized gender roles, and communication, and community. Jeremy and Lukas are both in their senior year at what essentially seems to be a prep school. There's lots of alumni-backed money specifically for Homecoming, and the whole book centers around the lead-up to the big game/dance. They used to date. Jeremy came out as trans recently, he breaks up with Lukas in a pretty drastic way (on the day of Lukas' brother's funeral) for reasons that are unclear to Lukas, now they're mortal enemies and are competing for the role of Homecoming King. Even before they were dating, they had been best friends for a really long time, so they have a lot of the same friends, and there's approximately a metric shit-ton of drama that ensues. Lukas is also grappling with being autistic but not wanting anyone at school to know about that, so rather than ask for accommodations for his disability, he decides to cheat. (I've seen some criticisms that the autism rep only comes up with relevance to Lukas' schoolwork, but it's pretty obvious to me that a big part of the miscommunications that happen are people expecting Lukas to pick up on social cues that he has trouble reading, and them getting upset when he doesn't get it. So that criticism doesn't really hold water to me, but I'm also not an autistic reviewer, so I can't speak 100% to that.)
If you are a person who needs to like the main characters to enjoy a book, I would think twice about this one. Then again, if you are a person who doesn't remember what it was like to be in high school...I mean, I don't know anyone who was perfectly likeable in high school. Though I have not been a trans boy in high school, I have been a post-trauma kid in high school, imagining that I should hurt other people before they have a chance to hurt me. I found that so relatable. I ALSO was the kid who covered immense sadness with anger because anger is an easier, more familiar emotion to deal with. Was Jeremy truly terrible to people who he claimed were friends? Yes. Is there really a satisfactory resolution to that, or a true reckoning for Jeremy about how incredibly self-centered he is? Not really. But one of the most interesting aspects of this book to me was the kind of overcorrection that Jeremy feels he has to do to convince everyone that he's a boy, which feels like the root of so much of his hurtful behavior. Imagining how it must feel to have something that feels so obvious to you be something you need to convince people of, that you have to constantly defend...I understand where the overcorrection comes from. So in order to make sure that people see him as a guy, Jeremy adopts some aspects of toxic masculinity, telling himself he has to do certain things because "that's what a guy would do" AND to distance himself from anything that might be seen as "feminine" because there's always the risk that people will think that he's not serious about being trans. Ellor mirrors that with a class assignment where Jeremy has to create a persuasive speech about a particular hot topic, and his is trans rights. Yikes. That was so devastating to read, honestly, that any trans person but a teenager especially has to spend their brain power worrying about that stuff rather than just being an idiot kid.
There were a couple of things that brought it down a star(ish) in my mind. I think the ending resolved too quickly for my tastes, and there were a number of things that didn't really get wrapped up as a result. The treatment of the "side characters" felt pretty crummy, they really only exist as vehicles for Jeremy and Lukas and not as people in their own right (though I would love to read a book about whatever's going on with Sol and Naomi), and I didn't love that. It could have been a really great opportunity for found family and queer community, and I think that Ellor was trying to elicit that feel, but since it wasn't the A (or B or C) plot, it didn't really develop in the way that I would have liked to see. Lukas' realization that he's not straight was less an epiphany and more of a throwaway, which felt strange to me, but I suppose that's how it might be for some folks when they're realizing their sexuality (though it wasn't for me) and it's true that there were about a fafillion other things happening in his life. I do think there was, like, one thing too many for me here, but overall, I'm glad to have read it and I can already tell it's one that I'm going to be thinking about it often.
Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Children's Publishing Group/Roaring Brook Press for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Deadnaming, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Transphobia, and Grief
Moderate: Biphobia, Death, Hate crime, Racism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, and Car accident