Disappoint Me

I was charmed by Disappoint Me (publication day May 27, 2025), much more so than Nicola Dinan’s first book, Bellies. Max and Vincent are the two main characters. Max is a trans woman, a lawyer who analyzes contracts as an AI, and is in between boyfriends, bored by the queer London scene. She falls down some stairs on New Years Eve and decides that she’s going to make the effort to date — she will try heteronormativity.

She meets Vincent–a corporate lawyer–through a dating app Both are biracial Chinese and white, and she is impressed by the fact he has mended his sock, which she notices when he takes off his shoes at her place. The narrative then shifts to Vincent’s perspective, from when he took a gap year and spent it in Thailand with his best friend, Fred. There we learn his secrets, about his previous experience with a trans woman.

Max feels out of place with Vincent’s friends–all in hetero relationships, but she also feels out of place with her own friends who are partnering off, having destination weddings that just seem pointless. And she is thirty and questions of kids come up over and over–but as a trans woman, is she entitled to want kids–does she even want them? Her brother has gotten a girlfriend pregnant, and he doesn’t react well, and then Vincent’s father has a heart attack. So life is happening for these two, and when Max finds out what really happened with that other trans woman he was with, can she ever forgive him? Are any of us the same person that we were ten or twelve years ago?

Dinan’s writing is beautiful and perceptive, and I loved this book! I loved the fact that Max was a lawyer who really wanted to be a writer (same!) and that it’s about forgiveness on so many levels–related to family and friends–and how our relationships are what is really important in our lives. I loved the fact that Max is a trans character and the book had nothing to do with his transition–we don’t learn about that process for Max at all, because it’s not relevant to the story, even though Max’s trans identity is very important. It’s very character-driven, but there is a huge development for Max that is put in place at the very beginning, driving the book forward.

There is a single instance of anti-fatness, when Vincent, who likes to bake as a way of caring for people, describes his mother’s reaction to that. But the rest of it is generally weight-neutral, and I nevertheless still enjoyed the book.