The Fantasy Review’s Spoiler-Free Review of I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book in return for an honest review.
I Wish You All the Best is the sweet, wonderful novel I wish I had been able to read as a teenager. Both simultaneously laugh-out-loud and tear-jerking, I absolutely loved this LGBTQ+ YA novel.
To start with the one aspect of this book I didn’t like much, the side characters are not very well developed. When you have a first-person YA narrative like this, it is easily done, especially as teenagers tend to be a little self-absorbed anyway (as do we all), so the story naturally might not pick up on other characters as much as we might have liked.
At its heart, this is a gentle story of belonging, for anyone who thinks they might never be loved, or might never belong somewhere, with wonderful people. This is a love letter to people out there who need to hear that there are people out there who will love you, even if you’re in a bad place now.
For fans of stories like Heartstopper, I Wish You All the Best is a fantastic addition to the heartwarming queer fiction on our shelves.
