BOOK INFORMATION TITLE: May the Best Man Win AUTHOR: Z.R. Ellor PUBLISHER: Roaring Brook Press RELEASE DATE: May 18th, 2021 GENRE(S): YOUNG ADULT FICTION--Contemporary, Romance BUY LINK: https://bookshop.org/a/11727/9781250625120 SYNOPSIS: A trans boy enters a throw-down battle for the title of Homecoming King with the boy he dumped last summer in ZR Ellor’s contemporary YA debut. Jeremy Harkiss, cheer captain and student body president, won’t let coming out as a transgender boy ruin his senior year. Instead of bowing to the bigots and outdated school administration, Jeremy decides to make some noise—and how better than by challenging his all-star ex-boyfriend, Lukas for the title of Homecoming King? Lukas Rivers, football star and head of the Homecoming Committee, is just trying to find order in his life after his older brother’s funeral and the loss long-term girlfriend—who turned out to be a boy. But when Jeremy threatens to break his heart and steal his crown, Lukas kick starts a plot to sabotage Jeremy’s campaign. When both boys take their rivalry too far, the dance is on the verge of being canceled. To save Homecoming, they’ll have to face the hurt they’re both hiding—and the lingering butterflies they can’t deny. REVIEW To begin, I think I should clarify that this book is wholly different from the expectations brought upon by the cover and early descriptions I’d heard of the book. Rather than an enemies to lovers fluffy fun highschool YA that the book and description give off, this book is without a doubt a hard hitting YA that deals with serious topics such as transphobia, sexual assault, and many other heavy themes. However, I think that this confusion in no way tampered with my reading experience and had some of the elements I liked most of this book. There isn’t a day when a kid wakes up and knows that they’re gay or trans, rather it’s a awkward and confusing time of self-discovery that Ellor is perfectly able to encapsulate in the two leads, Jeremy and Lukas. Firstly, the depictions of being a Trans kid in highschool (especially in a place like the DMV area) were absolutely relatable in truth and experiences. Regardless of being in a mostly-white and rich highschool in a fairly liberal area, the transphobia that is thrown at Jeremy were like a step back in time for myself as a queer teen. Despite this realism, however, I ended up not being able to like any of the characters which for me is a very off-putting in a book. I know other readers who love books where the leads are awful yet they rate the book highly anyway. If you love morally gray characters then this book is absolutely for you. Ellor has said he tried to write a story in which two people fall in love that aren’t perfect. Completely realistic and admirable to add to the ever growing genre of LGBT+ YA books, but the actions taken by some of the leads are unforgivable in my book. Jeremy, the trans main character, is convinced that everyone is being rude to him since he is trans which was so infuriating because this entire book Jeremy is an asshole to everybody. No matter their good intentions or even trying to be kind, he time and time again chooses to alienate everyone around him through his classist and rude attitude. I could go on for the reasons I don’t like him, but the other lead, Lukas, is a mess entirely on his own. Lukas has the same mentality that Park from Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell had by being so internally hateful to aspects about himself that he couldn’t change. With Park being internally very anti-Asian and racist towards himself while Lukas has a lot of internalized ableism. Since I, myself, am not Autistic I would highly suggest going to book reviewers who do have Autism to look for their stance on that representation within this book. However, this internalized ableism against his own Autism was very off-putting as a reader. Other aspects of this book such as the odd pacing, vilifying of all the wrong people and more made this book not for me unfortunately. But! I do think that this book definitely would check off boxes for many other people and so if you like any of the following, you’re sure to want to grab this book:
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8/10/2022 01:10:42 pm
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12/19/2022 11:25:29 am
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