Disappoint Me

by Nicola Dinan

Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. She’s living her best life. Or is she? The debris of years of dysphoria and failed relationships rattle around in her head. When she tumbles down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party and wakes up in hospital alone, she decides to make changes. First up: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Enter Vincent, corporate lawyer and hobby baker. His trad friendship group may as well speak a different language to Max, and his Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. It’s uncertain terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she’d long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet he is carrying his own baggage. On his gap year in Thailand a decade prior, Vincent vies for the attention of a gorgeous traveller, Alex, with secrets of her own. Is he really the new face of the Enlightened Man, or will the ghosts of his past sabotage his and Max’s happiness?

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Contemporary, Romance, Literary Fiction, Audiobook

273 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2025

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.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

early contender for Best Cover Of 2025.

this is a complicated book about complicated characters, and my feelings about it are complicated too.

it asks a lot about forgiveness and happiness, what a good relationship and a good person and a good life is and are and can be.

it doesn't pretend to know the answers to any of them, which can be discomfiting. a lot about this book makes you think about things you may not want to, and realize things about yourself that can feel at odds with who we'd like to see ourselves as.

but as it offers the wonder of complexity to its cast, it offers it to its readers too. and that is a gift to read.

bottom line: pleasantly layered, like a quadratini.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Farda Hus · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I thought this would be an easy book to forget, and honestly, by the time I’m writing this, I’ve already forgotten big chunks of the story. I just remember the part where she falls down the stairs at the beginning, and the big reveal near the end. Everything in between felt like a lot of wandering, talking, and not much really happening.

I didn’t feel a strong connection with the characters, which made it hard to stay emotionally invested. I’ve seen other reviews where people said they were in tears... but I didn’t shed a single one. Maybe I’m just not the target audience. Please check out some of the glowing reviews before deciding, mine might just be the odd one out.

That said, one line from the book really stuck with me:

“This is also the world where people, often women, are doomed to spend much of their lives forgiving the errors of others and suffering for the sake of other people’s growth.”

It wasn’t a bad read, just not one that left much of a lasting impact for me.

Note: Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Note 2: And before anyone comes at me, NO!!!! I’m not transphobic. I have no issue at all. This book just wasn’t for me.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dinan's narrator is a British-Chinese trans woman, a legal counsel and a published poet, a queer party girl trying her luck at heteronormativity: "No person is fewer than two things", Max observes in her own poetry, but the practice of this insight is challenging. When she starts dating Vincent, a Hong Kong Chinese lawyer who is seemingly much more at peace with his career choices and the life he has built than Max, the relationship slowly grows, until Max finds out what he and his friend Fred did to a trans woman a decade earlier during a trip to Thailand. Can Max reconcile these two things, the mistakes of the young Vincent and who he is today?

Dinan alternates the storyline of the couple Max and Vincent in 2023 with the experiences of Vincent and Fred in 2021. In both timelines, the author explores complicated friendships and how the world treats and reacts to trans people, as well as familial expectations: Vincent's parents expect him to have children, Max' father is an alcoholic with a difficult relationship to his son, whose ex-girlfriend fell pregnant. Friendships modulate due to marriages, altered time schedules and geographical estrangement, but what once connected and separated people remains emotionally relevant. Everything is held together by Max' astute observations and pointed descriptions, her matter-of-fact attitude and her struggle to deal with how the world reflects back to her.

For the most part, this novel is highly engaging and holds a good pace, just in some places it starts to meander and feel slightly lengthy. Still, the psychological writing is very skilled and convincing, and the way Dinan reveals societal circumstances through the eyes of individual characters is effective: Science tells us the facts, but literature tells us how the world feels through different eyes. And at this, Dinan succeeds.

[Celine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It’s hard to digest these uncomfortable collisions with the past, to not take them as evidence that we haven’t changed much at all, that all those extra layers are just onion skin. Translucent, immaterial.”

I loved this book, fiercely. It got right under my skin and there it will stay, indefinitely.

We follow two POVs: in one we have Max, a trans woman entering a new relationship, and then in the other we have Vincent, the person she has begun seeing.
Max’s POV is set in the present moment, with the two getting to know one another, whereas Vincent’s takes place a decade or so earlier. Sometimes, with time shifts, I feel like one ends up being stronger than the other, or they feel disjointed from each other. I didn’t have that experience while reading this.
It felt similar to the way we experience time in real life; a shifting of different versions of ourselves, constantly moving around each other.

I also appreciated the exploration and representation of romantic partnerships between men and trans women, family trauma, the journey forgiveness requires of us all, as well as how both narrators come from Chinese heritage.

But what resonated with me the most is how, though Max’s transness is intrinsic to her life and her story, there is also a universality to the experience of womanhood. Which is why I think books like this- and authors like Nicola Dinan are so important. It isn’t, nor will it ever be difficult to understand trans stories, because they are human stories first!
A gorgeous book, one which will surely be a favorite of the year for me.

Thank you, Dial Press, for the early copy in exchange for an honest review!

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus)]

justice for crocs-loving sapphics...review to come.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

the epilogue was perfect

[BookOfCinz · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could describe this book and its characters in one word, it would be earnest, with a sprinkle of evil.

Nicola Dinan's writing feels very "now" and I thoroughly enjoyed being in Max world. The book is told from the point of view of Max a 30 something trans-woman living in London working as an AI Lawyer. We meet Max at a new year's eve party, freshly single with her bestie and during the course of the night she falls and hits her head- what a way to start the year. Fortunately for Max, things pick up, she meets a guy on an app and they really kicked things off... that is until she learns about his past.

I loved this book so much. It was tender, endearing and a litlly cunty at times which I love.

This is what I call the perfect summer read.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Update: ARC SECURED

new lit fic novel by Bellies author Nicola Dinan WHO'S WITH ME?!

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

At least Disappoint Me didn't make me cry. It was, however, just as beautifully written as Bellies.

Disappoint Me tells us the story of Max, a trans woman and her boyfriend, Vincent - a man with secrets.

The dual timeline follows Max and Vincent's relationship but also Vincent's past during his gap year.

It is a simple story but it is beautifully told and the richness of the storytelling sets it above other novels.

This is a very different novel to Bellies exploring, as it does, relationships between families, romantic ones between men and trans women, forgiveness and acceptance, understanding that we all make mistakes and being able to admit our faults.

I loved Bellies and I loved Disappoint Me. I look forward to Nicola Dinan's next novel.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the advance review copy.

[Kyra Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the dual narrative; it really helped me connect to the story seeing the mindsets of Max and Vincent. Nicola Dinan did a beautiful job of addressing modern relationships, identity, and forgiveness. Max was so complex, I felt that I was there, seeing everything she had to overcome. This is well written but quite forgettable, which is a personal opinion because I've read a lot of books with this similar plot that have affected me more deeply. This book is just not one I would read again. I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

[Tell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so moved by this. Dinan is sharp and funny, two things I crave in my fiction. Protagonist Max is a trans woman with a mean streak (thank god) who decides to change her life after a disastrous New Year’s Eve. The depictions of queer nightlife- the digs, the joy, the growing sense of unease as you enter your thirties and start to wonder if this is going to be the rest of your life- are pitch perfect.

Vincent’s chapters were fascinating, but Max is the beating heart of this book. The heteronormativity of the wedding industry, the casual cruelty of transphobia and racism, and the blistering depictions of the deeply basic all really worked for me. There’s one line about Friends, Disney and Harry Potter being the most massive franchises of our generation and Millennials still acting like they’re unique for liking them that rattles around in my brain constantly.

I cried at the end, and the expansive look at the pressure of performing for your biological family, the stiltedness of childhood relationships, and the horror of being thirty- weddings, babies, friendships with insane people- are all perfect. This book is a masterpiece and one of my new favorites.

[Chris | Company Pants · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had been in a relationship with someone for just over ten years when I woke up one morning, opened my eyes and knew that things needed to come to a close. By any stretch of the imagination, there was nothing wrong with the relationship at all. We had been living together for quite some time, we were comfortable, we had a routine, we were coasting. “No alarms and no surprises,” as the man once sang. But in a relationship that had been borne from our shared creativity and our determination to see our creative goals blossom, we had stopped challenging each other, we had stopped daring each other to push harder and to do more. By the end of that day, most of my things were already in boxes ready to move forward and away.

Disappoint Me begins with a fall. A literal fall down a flight of stairs at a New Year’s party. It’s the kind of fall that, as you read about it, you can picture it in your head, both from the outside perspective of those witnessing it, as well as firmly ensconced in the mind of the heroine at the heart of the story, Max. It’s the kind of fall that as it’s happening to you, it feels as if decades pass until you reach the end. It’s the kind of fall that has a singular moment of clarity when you land that lasts a mere second for onlookers, but for you extends the length of eternity as you find the space to examine your current place in life, the choices that you’ve made to arrive at this place and the choices that you will need to make to escape this place. It’s the kind of fall that forces you to wake up and walk away.

For Max, it’s the kind of fall that subconsciously allows her to drift away from the extreme highs and lows of the never-ending party that is the artistic, queer London party scene of her twenties as she meets Vincent, a somewhat slick, somewhat rigid, but kind and attentive corporate lawyer after the two match on a dating app. Max is a published poet that’s struggled to find the words and the will to pen another poetry collection as she “falls back” on her career as a lawyer spending her days being the secret, uncredited voice behind an AI law app. After being mired in the muck of a five year relationship with a fellow writer more attuned to his own ego and the coif of his hair, Max is unfamiliar with attention from a partner that feels honest and considerate rather than conditional and transactional.

But Max, a trans woman just having crossed over into her thirties, has doubts about Vincent’s intentions and her own feelings towards someone that wasn’t spawned from the same literary and art scene that is the foundation of most of her social circle. As the relationship deepens and their lives become more intertwined and involved, Max marvels at how easily she slipped into a relationship that feels more heteronormative without even trying, at one point remarking “fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife” as she takes in the surroundings and trappings that she and Vincent have built together.

The narration of Disappoint Me alternates between that of Max in the current day and with Vincent at the age of nineteen as he’s in the midst of a gap year that finds him with a plan to travel to meet his childhood best friend in Thailand. Nicola Dinan does a masterful job at creating two distinctly unique voices in her two narrators as Max reads as deeply intelligent, witty and self-effacing (almost Fleabag-esque in her mannerisms and voice) whereas the younger version of Vincent comes across as exactly what you would expect of a young man with the means to experience a year travelling the world with very few limits, if any.

As their relationship deepens, their separate worlds collide as family issues arise on both sides when Max’s brother announces that he’s about to become a father despite having ended his own relationship with the mother several months previously and Vincent’s father suffers a massive heart attack that shocks the entire family and sets Vincent into action to help care for his ailing father. Interspersed with the story of their blossoming relationship, the events of Vincent’s gap year abroad in Thailand with his best friend and a mysterious woman named Alex slowly come to light that paint Vincent in a much different and more sinister light than the man currently holding a grip on Max’s heart and call into question his reasons for wanting to be with Max in the first place.

Where Disappoint Me shines is in the time that it spends luxuriating in conversations between it’s characters. Max’s family and her best friend, Simone, are a particular delight to share time with as each interaction with them exposes some new layer of their complicated relationships with each other. Nicola Dinan revels in crafting scenes that expose the raw nerves of tense situations and lets you sit inside of them just long enough to grasp and experience the awkward, awful feelings that can arise when dealing with family trauma, distrust and the pain that comes with trying to adjust to adulthood.

After finishing my time with Disappoint Me, I had the chance to read through a few interviews with Nicola Dinan and discovered that not only is she currently working on her third novel in which she genre jumps over to sci-fi, but that she’s already in the planning stages for her fourth novel. In other words, we will be eating extremely well for the foreseeable future in regards to this remarkable new voice in literature.

I’d like to thank The Dial Press, Random House Publishing Group, NetGalley and or course, Nicola Dinan for the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of this stunning new novel.

[DianaRose · Rating 3 out of 5]

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc!

3.5 stars

disappoint me follows max and vincent and their rollercoaster lives as they go through love and lost, and experience life as queer adults

[ritareadthat · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Well, I suppose it’s hard to know whether we judge people for who they are now, or for who they once were.”

How does one not judge someone by the sins of their past? I think we have to fight with all of our might to be open-minded to allow the concepts of growth and change to replace the preconceived judgments we harbor deep down. It is not an effortless task. I don’t think it is easy for anyone, no matter who they are, or what they believe in. I think trust is at the forefront of helping to determine judgments, at least with those we are close with and have a relationship with - whether it be family, friends or significant others. If trust has been broken by transgressions of the past, I feel the bias will take root and lie in hiding, waiting for it’s chance to come to the surface and pronounce judgment, “They did it before, they will do it again, and look, they didn’t care last time and they won’t this time.” This is somewhat hypothetical of course. I’m using a personal anecdote here of a previous boyfriend who has various addiction obstacles he faces. How do you separate the trust from the judgment?

I can only imagine for a trans person that it is very difficult to trust, but I think that Max (Maxine, Maxy) in Disappoint Me is able to easily. Not to a point where she is naive, but in a healthy way. She trusts her close friend Simone, her new boyfriend Vincent, and her family. Max does worry a lot - about life, about things from her past, about her job, and about her flailing writing career. Although we hear all of Max’s concerns, she does not come off as obsessive, or neurotic, or as a cynic. I think she is a very well-rounded character.

Disappoint Me follows the lives of Max and her new boyfriend Vincent. The story is told via Max or Vincent in the present tense (they are in their early thirties in present tense), and then a few chapters of Vincent from when he was a 19 year old on his gap year while traveling. I felt the flow was skillful; it proceeded in a seamless manner and was not disjointed or hard to follow. Max can be a bit acidic at points in her inner musings, but isn’t everyone? We all have doubts about life and love and Max is no exception.

I enjoyed this book. I didn’t love love it, but it was a solid 4 stars. The writing is neat and meticulous, and I found myself highlighting various passages that struck me as “vibe moments” - where something resonates with my inner chi, speaking to me in a life-altering way. It’s really what I look for now when I read. Yes, I read some books for fun, but more I’m looking for that existential, philosophical, meaning-to-life type of wisdom now. I saw some of that in this book and I liked it.

This book was a more gentle involvement in the world of trans culture - I have read some that are very hardcore with terminology and lifestyle, and I felt that this was not that. I felt that it was just part of the story, not ALL of the story. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves the complications, the ups/downs and the tender moments of relationships large and small. You won’t be disappointed.

[Sarah ♡ (let’s interact!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicola Dinan’s writing style is so addictive - she has a talent at making her characters, and their stories, feel so *real*. From the first few pages, I felt as though I knew the main character - Max. It has echoes of her debut novel - Bellies - which I also loved.
This is a, refreshingly, modern take on a stereotypical story of a woman finding love in her thirties.
There’s a dual POV happening here; Max in the present day, and Vincent (mostly) from a decade ago. At no point does this become confusing and disjointed, thank goodness. The passage of time feels very natural in this book.

Both these main characters come from a Chinese background, Vincent’s parents in particular appear to have traditional values, which cloud his relationship with Max.
Max is the perfect woman for him; headstrong and intelligent. They met on a dating app, with initial sparks flying. She just so happens to be transgender. Vincent has dated a trans woman in the past that he met on holiday with his friend, Fred, called Alex. How will Vincent’s past experiences with Alex and Fred affect his present day relationship with Max? One thing is for sure, Max doesn’t want another failed relationship, she wants (and deserves) to find her person.

TW:// transphobic language, violence

4.5 Stars

[Ollie Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

nicola dinan’s ability to make me cry my eyes out in the final ten pages of a book must be studied

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

So funny, so smart, and extremely readable. This story is about a 30-year-old trans woman named Max and her new relationship with Vincent, a cis guy who has a secret about another trans woman he dated during his gap year before university. I loved Max's voice, her wry observations, and her relationship with BFF Simone, a cis queer woman. I don't know how I feel about the ending ... I think I wanted Max to make a different decision re: Vincent...

[pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

Told through dual perspectives, Disappoint Me, is a poignant novel that explores the idea of coming to terms with the mistakes that those you love most make and the complexities of choosing to forgive them.

Max is a 30-year-old transwoman who while recovering from a break-up, working as a lawyer for a tech firm where she doesn’t even get to sign off emails with her own name, and following an unfortunate incident at a New Year’s Eve party decides it’s time to change her life and “get serious” about building the sort of life she thinks she should be living at her age. Enter Vincent, a corporate lawyer of Chinese heritage that she meets on a dating app, who seems to be an answered prayer for Max, but whose past contains a life-changing event that casts a shadow over their future together.

I thought every single character (down to the side characters that make a one-off appearance) in this book was so well-developed. Dinan writes with such depth, and it’s all told through the main characters’ voices which are filled with humour and vulnerability. I enjoyed both perspectives equally which is a rarity for me when reading dual POV books.
The large themes of the book – identity, forgiveness, complex modern relationships, and the weight of past mistakes are heavy, yet the author managed to balance them and create a narrative that was engrossing and hard to put down.

This is a character-driven novel done INCREDIBLY well and I will be forcing everyone around me to read this.

Thank you to the team at Transworld Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC.

[james · Rating 3 out of 5]

sometimes audiobooks are just background noise until they throw something unimaginably sad at you. unfortunately, some continue to be background noise even after that.

[Alexis Hall]

Source of book: NG
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.

***

Gawd, this is so fucking good. Like, to a degree that I’m have a hard time knowing what to say about it except … like … this is so fucking good.

Our heroine Max, a mixed race trans woman who has just turned thirty, kicks off her new year by falling down the stairs, a insignificant-significant moment that galvanises Max to try and change the direction of her life. Something she both does and does not succeed at over the pages that follow. Trying to distance herself from her toxic ex, she almost defaults into a relationship with Vincent, a charming, Chinese lawyer, only to grow increasingly invested as Vincent’s sincerity and consideration slowly win her over. Of course there’s a lot more to the story than this. It’s very much a book about change and choices, with Max having to re-evaluate not only herself, and what she wants, but her life as a whole, including the people in it, whose roles are not so straightforward now Max is in her thirties.

I kind of don’t want to say more for fear of spoiling the gorgeous, complicated, arc of this book. The way it takes quite tropey character archetypes--the emotionally distant father, the ever-supportive best friend, the toxic ex, the good boyfriend--and re-contextualises and re-examines them. Plus words cannot express how much I love Max. Her voice, with its perfect mixture of camp, cynicism and eventual--reluctant--hope, absolutely makes this book. I relate unbelievably hard to her need to anticipate disappointment, almost to the point of inviting it, because it feels so much than safer than expecting more. But I also appreciate the way this was gently interrogated across the course of the book. Like does living in a world you expect to let you down actually help when it, y’know, lets you down. Or does it just get in the way of growth, change, and happiness?

Disappoint Me is full of zingers and sharp observations, for example:

There’s so much Foucault on the top shelf, and I couldn’t tell you anything about him, except that on the scale of male philosophers, he is among the more fuckable.

Girl, same.

Or this off-the-cuff description of a hangover:

It’s like an angry twink has poured poppers into my skull.

I wouldn’t go so far to say the tone is misleading--at the beginning of the book, especially, it would be out of place in a romcom--because that sounds negative (and also negative about romcoms) but I would say it’s deliberately evasive on the part of our heroine. The more Max dismisses things, and makes light of them, the less she has to think about them. And this book presents her (and us) with a lot to think about, particularly when it comes to the polarities of queer culture, and its unavoidable intersections with straight life. After all, how do you navigate heteronormativity when you’re a binary trans woman in a relationship with with a straight man. At that point, isn’t there a degree to which heteronormativity is the desired outcome?

For example, there’s a brilliantly observed scene where Vincent takes Max to meet his friends (all of whom, I think, are straight):

People slowly turn to wave at us. There’s a conversation between the men on one side of me, and a conversation between the women on the other. I make a note to join the women after introductions. What would they possibly do if there were a couple of gay men here? Would the bottom join us? I can’t take my eyes off the baby in the pram, rocked back and forth by a blonde woman. I don’t have friends with children. I don’t go to parties with children. I look toward the food table again. There are sweaty jugs of Aperol spritz, skewers of meat and veggies arranged in pyramids, crudités and halloumi slices in circles, a graveyard of sticky chicken wings, two entire salmon filleted upon beds of roasted tomatoes. Beneath each woman’s light jacket is a summery wrap dress, and I feel relieved, because I predicted this and therefore wore a summery wrap dress.

I laugh-winced my way through this description because, on the one hand, it is funny and funny in a specifically queer way (I have no idea what aperol spritz actually is but it exists in my head as something straight people drink), but on the other it highlights it highlights how alienating the dynamics that the heternormative world take for granted can be for anyone on the margins of them. There’s also the relieved sense of Max passing a test, in choosing to wear a summery wrap dress, but this is later shown to be inadequate as one of the women makes an off-hand comment about children:

I give Blonde Annabel what she wants and steer the conversation firmly toward her baby. I ask how old she is, and then ask questions about what the baby can do— whether she’s said any words, can crawl or roll over— and after a while it feels like I am asking someone about their car or Swiss Army knife.

“That’s so nice,” I say.

“It is! You’ll know one day”— and then Blonde Annabel gasps, and she puts her hand over her mouth—“ I’m so sorry. That’s so insensitive.” “No,” I say.

“Don’t be silly, it’s fine. Seriously.”

My head quickly swings from side to side, and I see that nobody is really paying attention, other than Aisha and the Annabels. I feel a prickly heat across my cheeks, a slapping reminder that I’m the other, that people are thinking about medicines and genitals and internal organs and other things that are none of their fucking business. What if I don’t want kids? Why does everyone assume that this is a tragedy?

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if Max can crack the summery wrap dress code because she will always be seen, in some way, as other.

For me, the weakest aspect of the book ended up being Vincent, but this was probably by design. I mean, he’s a straight dude, there’s only so interesting a straight dude can be, amirite? The present of the book is narrated by Max, and in interstitial sections, Vincent slowly relates an experience that took place when he was eighteen or so, travelling around Thailand with his best dudebro, Fred. One of the travellers they encounter is a young woman called Alex who Vincent ends up treating very badly.

There’s no escaping the fact that Vincent’s sections are so much less engaging than Max’s but, also, I do think giving us Vincent’s POV for such a critical, and, honestly, rather damning moment, in his life is necessary to ensure we don’t completely hate him or condemn Max for not hating him enough. Like, there’s no defending what Vincent does (it’s cruel and cowardly, and he does it to an extremely vulnerable person at an extremely vulnerable time) but at the same there’s context to it. He struggles with his sexuality, his masculinity, his identity as an Asian man and the way that positions him a certain way to the rest of his (predominately white) world. There’s a generosity, I think, to allowing us to see this act of Vincent’s so holistically: yes, he’s a straight man, but his life is not uncomplicated. Patriarchy hurts us all.

Max herself says:

Learning about Alex forced Vincent into personhood. Not just a fantasy who bakes cake and takes care of me and makes promises of the future, but a person who fucks up or worse. You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time when you can’t deny the bones their flesh. No person is fewer than two things.

What happened to Alex was despicable—there are no two ways about it—but there’s a life in which bad doesn’t always multiply, where the tide shifts, where awful things make people better. This is also the world where people, often women, are doomed to spend much of their lives forgiving the errors of others and suffering for the sake of other people’s growth. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but leave, and sometimes there’s nothing to do but forgive.

I don’t think Disappoint Me ever really comes to a definitive conclusion to the problems and questions it raises. Mostly, it just highlights the importance of making choices but also the impossibility of those choices and how subjective they’re necessarily going to be (”sometimes there’s nothing to do but leave and sometimes there’s nothing to do but forgive”). I did, however, put the book down feeling surprisingly uplifted. I like the idea that letting someone disappoint you--that being open to being disappointed--can, in its own way, be an empowering act, offering opportunities for acceptance and the possibility of moving forward. Rather than simply waiting for the inevitable moment that someone or something lets you down

[Vartika · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars: A highly underrated, queer alternative for those disappointed by Sally Rooney

As the balance tips me gently down my mid-twenties, I'm noticing a subtle shift in my peers and their attitudes towards the future.  Even where irreverence was once resolute, the couples amongst them are more prone to considering 'settling down', to folding into 'respectable' bourgeois domesticity and into each other; there are more talks of marrying. And, as suddenly as they can come, there are weddings. 


Max, the 31-year-old protagonist of Nicola Dinan's assured and compelling sophomore novel, feels it too. After a rough tumble down the stairs at a seasonably wild New Year's Eve party, she decides that mere sobriety is not enough in the face of her dissatisfaction during what should be the best years of her life. A lifetime of dysphoria, a poetry collection published to not quite the success she'd hoped for, a grossly-overpaid job as a lawyer pretending to be AI, and the dull, looming pangs of a significant breakup all rattle and endear her to the idea of change, and she too decides to try on heteronormativity for size. The dating apps bring her Vincent: financially solvent, handsome and kind; a lawyer like herself and Chinese like her mother; he is a catch. While his parents may have never imagined their son dating a trans woman, and though the company of his trad friends is alienating and uncomfortable, he makes Max feel cared for in a way she had long given up on. But Vincent has his own decade-long baggage to carry. Tracking the course of their relationship over uncharted territory, Disappoint Me explores millennial malaise, questions of race, gender, family, and the extent to which the mistakes from someone’s past should define who they are now. 


Nicola Dinan's writing here is touched with a lightning rod, energised by her skilful exploration of her characters' psyches and the easy brilliance with which she crafts scenes and conversations capturing the textures and tensions of their inner turmoils and interpersonal dynamics. As with her debut novel Bellies, she deploys mealtimes as crucial components of storytelling as well as scene-setting to a striking effect. Making and eating meals is here a sociocultural ritual, as well as a means of giving her characters something to chew on as they try, and sometimes fail, to understand and connect with each other. It is also an effective way of further humanising her characters in a voice-driven story. 


Though the novel is composed of a dual narrative from Max and Vincent, every person in this book is complex, real, and fully fleshed out. While the author's examination of the comforts and teeth of heteronormative coupledom are structurally central, the book extends its untangling of ideas like forgiveness, acceptance, and making room for growth at a time of singularity – No person is fewer than two things – to the complexity of all our relationships more generally. Equal care is given to the gaps in articulation and understanding in Max's relationship with her father, a recovered alcoholic, and to the silent and explosive strains of toxic masculinity and make friendships in Vincent's dynamic with his childhood best friend. Both Vincent and Max's friends engage in problematic behaviours, to the effect of gently illustrating how we can yet only ever know one side of a person; that having experienced injustice doesn't make them immune to perpetuating harm. Several characters also bring nuance to the complexities of our own personhood, and what our reflexive and practiced resistance to vulnerability and examining our own issues may look like. 

I am in awe of the dexterity with which Dinan balances the book's darker, more delicate themes with a refined prose style that is witty, funny and contemporary without undermining the intricacies of her subject matter or her characters' experiences. While Bellies was an incendiary debut, Disappoint Me widens the lens and announces Dinan as a peerless literary voice that's here to stay.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tumble down the stairs convinces Max that it's time for a change: time for a stable relationship; time to settle down; time, perhaps, for a bit of heteronormativity. Enter Vincent.

On paper—and in person—Vincent seems like the perfect fit. Attractive, good job, good listener; he's Chinese enough to make Max's mother happy and unfazed by Max being trans. But behind all that there's something else: there's who Vincent was when he was younger, and the choices he made then. And these are neither things he wants Max to know about nor things he can hide forever.

I decide not to say anything, buckling under the pressure to upgrade by palatability. (loc. 758*)

The book weaves back and forth between then and now: now, from Max's perspective, starting to build this new life with Vincent; and then, from Vincent's perspective, when Vincent is young and stupid and backpacking through Asia. In places I found the book slow going just because Max's side of things is so much easier to take—Max is no saint, but she has her head basically screwed on right, and she has (usually) a strong sense of right and wrong. Vincent was harder to handle; young-and-dumb-tourist is not one of my favourite character types (though it's in here for a reason), and I could feel the Bad coming well before I had a sense of what shape it would take.

Max—and by extension the reader—is asked, then, to decide: what transgressions can be forgiven, and by whom? That is: even if Max decides that she can look past the things Vincent did in his youth, what right does she have to forgive? How do they move forward? And (largely unasked, in the book) is there an element of atonement in Vincent's relationship with Max?

I love how messy things get, if not the things themselves—I don't like my characters squeaky-clean and perfect, because shades of grey make for more realistic and more interesting reading. It helps that Vincent's transgressions are not the worst of the book, but also that there are other characters (e.g., Simone) operating in shades of grey, or rather doing both good things and bad. Max does have to make decisions about the relationship, and what to do with it, as the book nears its end, and I had mixed feelings about the way things pan out. There are a limited number of ways the book could go there (the relationship could end; the relationship could continue; the book could end without the reader finding out what happens). I suspect that I was never going to be entirely satisfied with any of those options, which is actually a good thing in terms of the book—again, grey area. It'll be interesting to see where Dinan goes next.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

[Elizabeth Tuttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappoint Me did not, in fact, disappoint me.

We hear a contemporary perspective from Max, a trans woman experiencing some general millennial ennui. She begins to date the incredibly ordinary Vincent and we watch Max navigate his social circle. We also hear from Vincent's perspective, though his narration is from years earlier when he had an impactful interaction with a different trans woman. The story is very much about growth, acceptance, forgiveness, and what defines us.

Dinan has some really beautiful lines in this novel.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75/5 ARC and ALC gifted by the publisher & @prhaudio

I really loved how tender this story is. Dinan blends humor with the serious moments so well, that the characters really come to life. I particularly love the examinations of modern marriage/relationship via a trans woman, gay woman, and cis straight man’s perspective. While there are definitely different experiences and difficulties experienced by various demographics, I also love that Dinan writes about the similarities shared between all of us. The self doubts, the loneliness, and the delicate balance between wanting to be a good person vs wanting to feel good.

Dinan has such a way writing stories and characters that pull at my heartstrings. I recommend this to readers looking for a modern story about love that will make you laugh out loud and tear up a little 🥺

[Ayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
★★★★★
Colorful. Procedural. Exquisite.

“. . . but there’s a life in which bad doesn’t always multiply, where the tide shifts, where awful things make people better… This is also the world where people - often women - are doomed to spend much of their lives forgiving the errors of others and suffering for the sake of other people’s growth. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but leave and sometimes there’s nothing to do but forgive.”

Not Netflix. Not Prime. Not Hulu. This deserves to be picked up by Apple TV - the only studio thoughtful enough to treat this material with the precision and grace it requires.

Let me confess something first: I’ve never read a novel with a trans main character. I didn’t plan to fix that picking this book up - I just grabbed Disappoint Me because the cover was gorgeous, and I’m so glad I did. This book felt like opening a cupboard and discovering Narnia (see my first reactions in my reading notes timeline). It burst my world open in color. I’ve been telling everyone about it ever since.

Beyond identity, beyond the uniqueness of the protagonist, what got me was the heart of this story. I admired Max deeply. In another life I want her steadiness, her zest, her quiet courage. She’s human, flawed, cool, full of life - and Dinan lets her take up the space she deserves.

In ‘Disappoint Me’ we meet Max - a trans woman living in London whose life is marked by difficult relationships and a sense of being "other," though she is also intelligent and has some professional success. She works at an AI legal startup and also a writer and poet.

The book starts with a contemporary, almost Sex and the City bounce. It’s chic, gossipy, vivid, whimsical. Dinan uses that playfulness as a Trojan horse to usher into weightier themes. There are wild parties, a staircase fall at the beginning, chaotic exes, and a “this is all there is” vibe that charms you into lowering your guard.

And then bit by bit - Dinan starts breaking your heart - as Max’s radiant world collides with the cynical, narrow one we all know, the tone shifts. It hurts. And it’s beautiful.

By exploring otherness so fully - by letting us live in Max’s world instead of framing it as an exhibit - the book quietly dismantles the idea of otherness itself. Max is not a victim; she is the center, the sun, the one with gravity. Watching the world shrink itself around her is the emotional engine of the novel.

At its core, Disappoint Me is about forgiveness-who deserves it, who gets it, and who we become when we offer it anyway. I loved the colorfulness of Max’s world. I loved her tenderness with Vincent. I loved the superficial, absurd, painfully accurate depiction of friendships. I loved how strength is allowed to be soft, funny, confused, human. Max is not a victim. When I grow up, I want to be like Max :)

This is one of the best books I read this year and went straight onto my re-read list.

Favorite Quotes
“One of life’s great ironies is that many people are successful precisely because they would never feel like it”

“I really wanted to be a success - to be invited to places to talk and read. And none of it really came to be. It feels like I’m picking a wound. I dunno. It all feels like an echo”

“You’re the center of things . . . I mean for me. . . When you’re the sun you don’t get much say about what’s sucked into your orbit. I don’t want to be something through which other people plan. All I want is to be a speck . . .”

“Maybe the world will change for better or worse but can we really wait for any of that?”

“I could really fucking die. . . And I just want time to stop”

“There are a million ways in which I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago and a million ways in which I’m the same . . .”

“The things you don’t educate yourself on, you don’t have empathy for”

[Brittany (whatbritreads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this to review!*

What an absolutely gorgeous, devastating novel. It felt so current and razor sharp, and it’s definitely a book that feels super relevant in this current political climate. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I think it made me feel the full spectrum of human emotion. It was tender, it was sickening, it was anger inducing, it was comforting, it was hopeful, it was devoid of hope. The whole vibe of the story just gives off that authentic messiness and uncertainty of life in your late 20s/early 30s and it was perfect.

I’ve never read a book that explored transness so thoroughly, and it was incredible. It was so well written, and though the primary focus is on queerness, gender identity, and self expression and attarction, it also did a great job of exploring those alongside culture, societal norms, and layered family dynamics. Watching these characters battle with their inner self vs. external expression, and unlearning their internalised shame and transphobia was a harrowing journey. It turned out to be a really beautiful story in the end, even with how brutal and hurtful it could be. The complicated nature of it made for such an engrossing read.

This is one of those books that forces you to slow down and pay attention to the words to really let them sink in. It’s extremely dreamlike and gentle in pacing, with a definite focus on our two main characters and how their lives intersect. I enjoyed exploring that a lot, and how their relationship dynamic evolved over time as they learned not only more about each other, but themselves. I really liked the dual style of narration, because it felt like we got such well rounded perspectives and it posed such interesting questions. The complexity and the flawed nature of these characters made them so vulnerable and human, and I adored how authentic and relatable it felt.

The ending of the book felt like that one part of party4u by Charli XCX, so do with that information what you will. I mean it as a compliment, my heart felt like it was kind of in my throat. This was my first experience with Dinan but it certainly won’t be my last, I’m super excited to see what she does in the future.

[Mel || mel.the.mood.reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappoint Me is an assured and captivating sophomore novel, a worthy albeit significantly darker follow up to Bellies. Nicola Dinan makes solid use of a dual POV/timeline, oscillating between 31 year old lawyer Max in the present day, a trans woman who spends her days impersonating a robot working as in-house counsel at a tech company and flashbacks from the past of Vincent, Max’s new straight laced boyfriend as he traveled through Thailand on a gap year over 10 years earlier. In the present, Max adapts to the growing pains of a burgeoning relationship - trying the heteronormativity of a life with Vincent on for size, while also navigating complex relationships with childhood friends, her parents, and her flailing workaholic brother. In the past, Vincent meets and has an immediate connection with Alex, a beautiful woman who discloses only that she has come to Thailand for necessary surgery. The two later rendezvous with Vincent’s friend Fred to attend a Half Moon party, a meet up that ultimately has harrowing, long lasting consequences.

Dinan shines at writing a motley crew of complex characters, and I loved the development of Max and her messy friends and family. The subject matter is quite heavy, dealing with themes of addiction and transphobia, but these topics are deftly handled, harrowing but depicted in a manner that‘s unflinching yet never salacious. The story also ends a hopeful note, leaving the reader confident in the belief that people can heal and grow, that one need not be defined by horrific yet decidedly youthful ignorance.

Many thanks to Random House/Netgalley for the arc. Please pick this one up! Now more than ever it’s vital in these dark times to read and amplify queer fiction.

[Spooky Cilantro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was deeply insightful and a look into the complexities of life. I felt like a fly on the wall seeing each character go through internal struggles, relationships, family dynamics, regrets, and aspirations. Not everything is black and white and to think that way can cause misunderstandings, bad choices, and regret. Life is truly short and people are put in situations where they will have to contemplate their actions and its consequences. Not everything you see on the surface is what it seems, when we start peeling the layers we see that the human experience is complicated. There were so many moral dilemmas in this story you can’t help but to feel empathetic towards everyone. This was a great read

[Carm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicola dinan's writing is delicious and my soul is FED

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this novel is fitting—it disappointed me. Occasional flashes of brilliant prose earn it 2 stars, otherwise not much else here worked for me. Bummer.