“Because the world values our lies over our truths, our silence over our voices, our deaths over our lives. “Our story is supposed to be about suffering,” I tell the GSA. “I propose we shine.”
It’s books like these that make me so incredibly thankful for the #ReadWithPride series because I kind of want to stand on a skyscraper somewhere and throw copies of this book at people down below, urging them to read it (or be pummelled by it which, incidentally, was what happened to my feelings while reading this). Really, May the Best Man Win was nothing like what I expected and dare I say, I might even love it more because of that fact. From the cover and synopsis, you’d think this is a fun queer rom-com about ex-lovers who find themselves fighting for the same homecoming king crown after one of them transitions over the summer. And it is that, but it’s also so much more.
You’ve got ex-lovers rivalling each other, one character—Lukas—nearly crumbling under the weight of the unspoken expectations his parents set for him after his older brother dies, the other—Jeremy—wading through the spaces he occupied before transitioning and trying to reclaim his rightful place in them while people either throw well-placed barbs or actual physical threats his way. Throw into that mix hurt feelings on both of those sides as Lukas tries to understand why Jeremy broke up with him before transitioning and Jeremy not wanting to ever even think about what caused him to do it, and you have yourself a kaleidoscope of feelings in one page-turning contemporary.
But, primarily, this book is about one emotion: anger. And I was here for it.
Jeremy isn’t a character that you’re prone to like right from the start; he’s angry, he often lashes out, he has a tendency to only think of himself, and sometimes, anger and spite take over his entire personality. But, all cards on the table, I loved him immediately because I understood where he was coming from. As you go through the story, you learn Jeremy’s reasons for acting the way he does, how most of what he ends up doing is a protection mechanism because he always has to keep an eye out for any sort of disruption or hatred being flung his way. If you don’t sympathise with him from the beginning, I guarantee that you will by the end of the story because his journey is filled with so much growth that really spoke to me.
Besides, what can I say, I’m an absolute sucker for the “doing things out of spite” trope. What better way to stick it to your ex-boyfriend than by upstaging him and winning homecoming king, right? That sort of motivation, I can get behind. This leads me to the second-chance romance we have in this story. Both Jeremy and Lukas struggle with the cards they’ve been dealt in life on top of new developments, not to mention their very public break-up. Ellor gives you these two opposing perspectives on how the past came to pass—i.e. how Jeremy and Lukas respectively understood the break-up—and somehow manages to make you feel empathy for both of them, which definitely was a feat. I loved how the more they tried to upstage each other, the more they understood that it wasn’t about winning homecoming king—it was about winning back the person they trusted above everyone else.
That being said, it took me quite a while to get my footing in this story. It felt like the book didn’t quite know what it wanted to be in the first third—e.g. quirky, politically activist, social commentary, a true love story—and it took a while for different plot threads to weave together. But as everything eventually moved clearer in one direction and Jeremy and Lukas actually started talking beyond trading snarks and glares, I could not put this book down before knowing what would happen during homecoming and who would be crowned king.
On top of that, this book has a great, diverse cast of secondary characters, some absolutely mischievous shenanigans and authentic and relatable autism representation.
Roaring, raging, and riotous, May the Best Man Win is a queer lovers-to-exes-to-enemies-to-lovers romance that will have you rooting for both Jeremy and Lucas to win homecoming king—and each other’s hearts.
May the Best Man Win is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 18th 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
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 outdate 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.
