A review by patienceholmes
May the Best Man Win by Z.R. Ellor

Did not finish book. Stopped at 40%.
This book made me so miserable. Jeremy was so mean to literally everyone and it was honestly painful to see everyone getting hurt because he couldn’t get over himself. I agree with what other people have said that it’s important to portray lgbtq+ characters as being messy and flawed and not perfect but I felt like this portrayal went way too far. He literally didn’t have one single positive healthy relationship with anyone and it was exhausting. 

I stopped when Jeremy started using Lukas’ autism to shit on him/expose his vulnerabilities. I don’t care if it’s a fictional character, as an autistic person I don’t wanna sit through ableism. I really regret spending money on this book. I’ve also seen from other reviews the book gets worse with the ableism and with some lesbophobia so I’m glad I didn’t continue. 

I also didn’t like the depiction of Lukas’ autism. It felt like the author did a google search and chose two of the traits and that was it. Obviously it may have been expanded on further on but at 40% of the way through I expected more. It just wasn’t nuanced at all and though the internalised ableism was true of a lot of peoples experience it was also hard to read so please put yourself and mental health first and don’t read this one if that might negatively effect you. 

I’m cis so can’t speak to the trans representation in the book so please look at some own voices reviews for that! 
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