May The Best Man Win: A Book Review

Ooh, man.

Short book summary: after a breakup, two ex-boyfriends fight each other in order to become prom king. And it is wild.

First and foremost though, I know this book (a little) and this author (a lot) are somewhat disliked, so I want to run a little MTBMW defense here first and foremost:

There are some things people have mentioned not liking about this book that I don’t really take issue with, one of these being the jumps from light-heartedness and high school drama and teenagers living their best lives to literal death and trauma and transphobia and identity issues and toxic masculinity and betrayal—to name a few. I understand the criticism—the tone can be all over the place, and the writing so unsubtle it’s nearly jarring to read at times—but it provides a definite intrigue that gets you interested in the lives of our main characters and their pasts with each other. I’ve also seen character hate trains, particularly a Jeremy hate train, and again that’s fair, because Lukas (on occasion) and Jeremy (on the daily) can be dicks.

That being said, let me be abundantly clear: Jeremy Harkiss and Lukas Rivers CARRY this book on their BACKS, dude. They are the drama, they are the entertainment, they ARE the story. The discussions, thoughts, and complex agglomeration of emotions they have with and about each other drive the novel forward. Learning about their breakup in all its outlandishness and tragedy, as well as the book delving into the way they operate afterwards as both exes and rivals for the crown, is when the story is at its best.

Both of the boys represent very real parts of our youth that are often overlooked in our literature and media, being trans and autistic respectively and navigating those waters, and some readers may have chosen to connect to these parts of them and perhaps wanted to see them represented differently. But these characters don’t owe it to anyone to be perfect or even morally upstanding. They’re high school boys; in other words, they’re idiots, and I was thoroughly intrigued and charmed by these two idiots.

But to keep it short, the most striking issue I take with this book is that for all its creativity, it’s pretty much entirely one dimensional.

The entire plot is dependent on our main boys and their intelligence, plots, schemes, personalities, and struggles. It’s not… all that interesting otherwise. Like, at all. Becoming prom king? That’s what will save these two deeply troubled kids??? No one in this entire universe, except apparently Lukas and Jeremy, give this much of a fuck about anything, let alone becoming prom king. Though we of course can suspend our disbelief to a point, it’s still a really weird hyperfixation for both characters to have to have to the point where even though it’s an absurd book, you have to kind of wonder why they think this will actually make anything better for them. The book’s reasons are just silly and absolutely not enough.

But at least them putting their lives on the line to become prom king makes for some fun chapters and kind of, sort of makes sense. You know what doesn’t make sense? The impeccable studiousness of each and every kid at the goddamn school. This peeved me. EVERYONE in this book cares way too much about school. There is literally not a single character who is not at any given time talking about classes or teachers or clubs or tests or prom or college. It’s like, since Jeremy and Lukas care so much about school, literally everyone else also has to too?? And I don’t just mean their entire respective friend groups—I mean every single character in the book. Including the parents and siblings. What a weird decision.

Also, the bully should’ve been at least a little more fleshed out. It was hinted at that Jeremy and him had history as friends once, but the author never really delves into it as much as I wanted. So by the end he was completely uninteresting, utterly a dick, and his function was being ready to hate crime Jeremy at nearly every single point in the novel for pretty much no reason. His purpose in the story was to be this weird one-dimensional evil that comes off as unrealistic and almost psychotic, even in this crazy, mega dramatic story. I get that the mere existence of trans people can give some people aneurysms—I do. But if you’re going to be the main antagonist, I’m naturally going to expect a little more than that. At least delve into this guy’s transphobia a little and show us why he hates Jeremy so much. But that was too much to ask, unfortunately. Maybe his character was there to raise some pity points for Jeremy when he’s being a bigger asshole than usual, which was honestly somewhat effective.

Because Jeremy is good at towing the line between moral and selfish with varying degrees of guilt and introspection throughout, you would think the book itself wouldn’t go all cornball when it comes to messaging. But—SIGH—it does. The book wants to make sure you know that there is a good side and an evil side, both in the school and in the world outside of it, and that’s unfortunate, because it really dumbs down the few meaningful moments the novel has. It’s not even the corny messaging that’s annoying as much as it is the fact that most queer kids don’t need to be told that. It seems a little infantilizing.

All in all, this book is, in a word, MESSY. Don’t expect depth or a realistic depiction of a high school queer experience. Don’t expect a realistic depiction of a high school at all, because that’s not here. What is here is a lot of drama, a lot of chaos, a lot of betrayal, and an entertaining set of crafty cunning queer kids caring way too much about projecting their heavy life issues onto being prom king… for some reason. And also, they really love school.

An entertaining and tolerable read overall, but not at all what I would call a good book. 2/5 for me on this one.

Thanks for reading!