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Book Cover for: Disappoint Me, Nicola Dinan

Disappoint Me

Nicola Dinan

Reader Score

83%

83% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 4 reviews on

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"One of the sharpest and most emotionally vulnerable novels on the complicated dynamic of dating cisgender straight men as a trans woman."--Autostraddle (7 New Trans Novels to Read this Summer)

"Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other."--Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, Baby

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR (SO FAR): Elle, Vogue, BookRiot

You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can't deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she's found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she'd always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships--familial and romantic--that make us who we are.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Dial Press
  • Publish Date: May 27th, 2025
  • Pages: 320
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.20in - 6.30in - 1.30in - 1.15lb
  • EAN: 9780593977873
  • Categories: LiteraryLGBTQ+ - TransgenderWomen

About the Author

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, won the Polari First Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards and Mo Siewcharran Prize, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize.

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"Nicola Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other."--Torrey Peters, author of Detransition Baby

"Brimming with razor-sharp wit and compassion, Disappoint Me is a charming, big-hearted love story unlike any I've read before. It's an insightful and brilliant meditation on the existential anxiety of otherness, the intermingling of pride and shame, and forgiveness."--Marisa Crane, author of A Sharp Endless Need

"Disappoint Me is a study in human frailty that is riveting, funny and devastating. It explores heteronormativity, friendship and getting older but, most of all, it's about confronting the disturbing fact that we cannot ever fully know the person we are sleeping next to."--Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue

"Disappoint Me is an absolute gift. Bursting with big questions about the politics of romance, family, and care, this novel navigates moral and emotional complexity with grace, nuance, and real storytelling nerve. Dinan is a savvy observer of contemporary culture; she writes with wisdom, style and brilliant comic instincts."--Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends

"Dinan has such a deep understanding of people and why they do what they do, how they arrive where they are, and she brings the world to us so completely--all the pain, love, joy, and mess--that I feel completely winded by the wholeness of it."--Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak

"Disappoint Me is a mature and assured novel. I admired Nicola Dinan's work in elaborating the growing pains of a trans experience muddled by race, class, and changing public attitudes."--Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk

"Disappoint Me is a wonder of a novel, hilarious and heartrending in equal measure: one that marries the prickly, delicious pleasures of its keen observational comedy with the riskiest ventures into the unavoidable messiness of true human intimacy."--Elaine Castillo, author of America is Not the Heart and How to Read Now

"Immersive, perceptive, and layered with nuanced truths about friendship, family, queerness, and real romantic partnership, Disappoint Me is a brilliant and funny love story--the kind that shows us who we are, who we're scared we might be, and what it really takes to trust another person."--Jules Ohman, author of Body Grammar

"Nicola Dinan knows how to write directly to the flaws we show when in love, with biting wit and laugh out loud humor. Disappoint Me is an addictive read, that I really did not want to end."--Travis Alabanza, author of None of the Above

"Disappoint Me is clear evidence of the skill and talent of a writer who does not know how to disappoint, whose prose is vivid, emotive, powerful and funny, and whose ability to make us feel only grows stronger with every story she tells."--Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of US

"A delicious story of change, and a beautiful meditation on human connection. Dinan is a stunning chef of words, and this is a book for greedy reader."--Jodie Harsh