there is a lot of representation in the book for different identities and communities and the struggles with gender is written nicely, but this review is already super unorganized and messy, so, here are some more things i disliked! the token non binary character barely got a story on their identity and the gender identity struggles were pretty intensely one sided.

it has its moments but overall there are too many parts i didn’t like, and those heavily overpower the parts i did somewhat enjoy. i kept picking this up off my bookshelf because i was determined to finish it and as much as i wanted to like it, to be frank… i wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. not to mention the two main characters are honestly TERRIBLE people. onto the other content of the story: it was a relatively easy book to get through, i guess, but honestly, the writing was rather bad. i knew going into it that there would be homophobia and transphobia involved in the book, of course, but even besides that there were so many dark aspects to the book that reminds me of the importance of looking up triggers before reading a book.

otherwise, this book is horribly triggering and the cute cartoon cover about two boys who are exes and rivals finding each other again was lowkey misleading. i related heavily to the struggles with pronouns and enforcing proper pronoun usage around your peers and that is the only thing that saved this book for me.

two stars might be a little mean, but the only thing i felt connected to in this book was the frustration the main character felt over getting misgendered and the lack of acceptance he dealt with about being queer.

May the Best Man Win by Z.R. Ellor