i think that this authors writing style is just not my thing. these stories are so good and important and fresh to read but i didn’t love actually reading them. thank you for the book! i will still tell others to read

trans stories are still highly underrepresented and so I feel like when they do make it mainstream there’s a pressure for them all to be positive representation and have perfect characters whereas here Peters conjures raw, uncomfortable stories confronting the morally grey and painful sides of these characters.

they are cruel, jealous, insecure, take their pain out on others, and feel like they’re in competition with eachother but at the same time are vulnerable, longing to belong and experience moments of deep tenderness.

I love how each story/novella was a different genre and really captured the trans experience in its many forms. I hope Peters publishes more short stories in the future because she truly is a master at them!!

one thing I will say is that the second story needs a massive animal cruelty trigger warning so please be aware of that before you pick it up!

Stag Dance is a real & honest look into transness, gender exploration, and sexuality. It includes the titular novel and three novellas with a cast of main characters: a contagion survivor, a Quaker student, a burly lumberjack, and a young crossdresser. Each of these stories deals with one of these characters exploring their identity. The collection isn't afraid of the uncomfortable aspects and I love when books are brave like this. Thank you to NetGalley & Random House for the ARC. Check this book out when it publishes March 11, 2025!

Torrey Peters doesn't disappoint. I flew through this book. I was worried bout whether I would like the format of this book (4 novellas) but I shouldn't have. Each novella is brilliant, and as a whole, the book is brilliant. Bravo!

After loving this authors debut, I’m devastated to say that this collection just did not work for me. I only enjoyed one of the stories and really struggled to finish the rest of them.

An intriguing collection of stories, very much enjoyed how deeply they each go into their character's hopes and fears and motivations and failings.

Infect your Friends and Loved Ones: fun story, ends strong, was surprised by Peters' attempt at sci-fi, but she showed a deft hand.

Chaser: had me racing to the end, I’ll give it that, but frustrating that it doesn’t resolve in the kind of violence it’s promising. Kid gets me kicked out of school, he’s getting violence, not tenderness.

Stag Dance: vivid, strong ending that wove quite well with the rest of the story. Bit too much “local color”, as it were, but the interiority of the protagonist was potent, affecting.

The Masker: perhaps the best of the bunch, the most efficient of the bunch, the clearest, while still wrestling with s similar theme as the rest, the consequences of gender choices made or avoided.

You have to be in the mood for people doing nasty things to people they should care for as an outlet for their issues that they won’t acknowledge when you start reading this collection. It explores a lot of the dirty edges of transitioning and the love-hate, support and cannibalism, in queer connections/relationships/community.
The Masker might be my favorite of the collection. It’s kind of vile in a wonderful way. All of these stories feature betrayals of like individuals — girls turning on their sisters, lovers trying to ruin each other — usually born of a perverse, seductive desire for out-group validation, but this one felt the most bitter. Maybe it’s because the betrayal feels more grounded and pedestrian, the way it could traumatize or ruin the victim’s life is something that happens frequently; maybe it’s because this betrayal of all of them, feels the most bleakly pointless and against everyone’s interests or because it’s the one where the victim reciprocates the cruelty the least (towards the main character at least).
Stag Dance, the main novel of the collection, was the hardest to get into because of some combination of the slow pace (especially compared to the short stories surrounding it) and the style which leans into a historical, western vibe and incorporates a lot of unfamiliar technical and slang terms. But I did get attached to the main character and feel so much sympathy for her. The way she’s inherently forced/assumed to be hyper-masculine by dint of being ugly and large. She can’t even access the conditional tolerance of her femininity and desire to fill a ‘female’ role in the way Lisen does not necessarily just by being more attractive (because men are attracted to the main character too) but by being closer to what they are willing to accept their attraction to. It was heartbreaking, the moments when she is longing so intensely for an expression of her womanhood that she also felt was impossible.
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones felt like it needed more time if it was going to play out the sci-fi post-apocalyptic survival plot side of things, but it still hit with the emotional journey. Lexi’s “revenge” against cis society/for the suffering caused by transmisogyny starting by violating a fellow trans woman was such a frustrating choice (not narratively, just to witness).
The teen drama of The Chaser brought in the naivete and youthful uncertainty that felt different than the adult drama of the other stories, although much of the conflict and toxic feelings relating to gender and sexuality were similar. Robbie, despite the social warfare he’s waging, had this odd innocence in thinking things would really be easy and beautiful if the main character would just admit their love. The main character is obtuse and avoidant in a way that also feels so teenage.

80/100 or 4.0 stars

I liked all the stories but the main story, Stag Dance. Stag Dance did not capture my interest or keep me interested like the other three stories. I did end up skimming through that one, unfortunately. I enjoyed the other three: Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, The Chaser, and The Masker. They kept my interest from the beginning and I wanted to keep reading to see how Peters would end each story. If I liked Stag Dance I probably could have given this a 4.5 star, but it just didn't work for me.

wow, am i blown away by this. i've been following torrey peters since before the topside press era, and it's remarkable to see how her craft has grown since then. i'd already read "infect your friends and loved ones" and "the masker" as stand-alones before but it was so enlightening to read them again. the eponymous novel here was unlike anything i've read in a very long time. peters dances around the protagonist's revelation in such a sparse, beautiful way that had me hooked from the start. however, my favorite part of this collection of stories was "the chaser," which was so poignant, tender, and heartbreaking. my first five star review of 2025 and well-deserved at that.

As written in the acknowledgements, the author wrote these pieces over a period of 10 years while she went through her “never-ending transition”. She takes on the genres of speculative fiction, horror, western and coming of age.

The first story, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, takes an idea of a contagion spreading that affects sex hormones. I could not put this story down and found it fascinating. I was set up to continue to love the stories and novel to come in Stag Dance.

The second story, The Chaser, tampered my feelings a little bit because of some animal cruelty. Know going in that this a very challenging short story. I tried to look past it at the confused feelings of youth and coming into one’s own and appreciate that some stories are difficult.

Stag Dance, the titular novel within the book, takes on a western feeling taking place among a group of timber pirates in a winter camp who are invited to explore their inner desires while outwardly it deals with jealousy and who is deemed attractive. It was clear that the author has experience or has done a lot of research on the makings of a timber camp with lots of new vocabulary flowing my way. I liked this story but also felt like it felt incomplete. Perhaps the reader should look more closely into symbolism in this one rather than attend to the plot. I’m not sure.

The final story, The Masker, was very clever and the reader never quite knows which path the main character will take and why. I loved the characters Peters built in this one even though the masker also made me quite nervous, it was the perfect story to tie up this book.

Overall, Stag Dance has very descriptive writing creating quite the stunning visuals for the reader. I loved Detransition Baby, Peters’ debut, and will continue to read whatever she writes next.

Thank you to @netgalley and @randomhouse for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. Stay Dance publishes March 11, 2025.

STAG DANCE-Torrey Peters-Publishing March 11th, 2025 by Random House.
Stag Dance is Peters’ second book that contains three stories and one novel.
The main story, Stag Dance is about, “A group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.” (Blurb).
The other three stories, “Infect your friends and loved one”, “The Chaser”, and “The Masker”, are great supporting stories. In Infect Your Friends and loved ones, the narrator imagines a gender apocalypse and an unstable girlfriend. In The Chaser, two roommates in a Quaker boarding school have a toxic relationship.
In The Masker a young crossdresser must decide between, “handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.” (Blurb).
In all these stories, Peters writes with such force. Peters’ themes of gender, relationships, love, and obsession.
Favorite story from the four was The Chaser. Worth the read. Warning-some graphic scenes.
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC.

Peters' follow up to the acclaimed Detransition, Baby (2021) takes three previously published stories and pairs them with a new short novel, Stag Dance.

Of the short stories, "Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones" turns the idea of trans identities spreading through social contagion on its head by imagining patient zero for a literal virus that causes people's bodies to stop producing sex hormones, infected by her toxic partner. "The Chaser" is about two attendees of a Quaker boarding school, the narrator at war with his own attraction to a person in the process of investigating their gender. "The Masker" follows an online "sissy" who is torn between safely playing a sexually-fetishized female role dressing up on the weekends, and living as a woman full-time but facing the social stigmas associated with being transgender.

The new work (and longest) is Stag Dance, about the ritualistic crossing of gender roles in an illegally run all-male timber camp in the old-west. When a financial downturn hits the camp, the foreman announces a "Stag Dance" to improve morale; a formal dance where anyone who wants to attend as a woman and be courted as such can. The narrator chooses to do so, using another logger's attempts to pressure a pretty man into attending as his date as an opportunity to intervene while also engaging in his own desires. This instead creates a rivalry between the pretty man and himself for the attention of the loggers, while they also form a connection over their evolving social statuses within the camp. The text is jargon-heavy, with heavy references to 19th century old-west logging tools and culture, which depending on the readers view, could enhance the story's world-building, or distract with the density of the Deadwood-like poetic prose.

As the quintessential lumberjack (nick-named "Babe Bunyun" for both his physical strength and his traditionally "ugly" features) comes to align more and more with his feminine role as the dance approaches, his role within the camp changes, and an unfortunate encounter on the road threatens to throw everything into jeopardy. Woven in, is a superstition about a former logger-turned-cryptid who may be lurking around the camp, and the ever-present threat of discovery by government agents and thieves. Towards the end, Peters' short novel veers from a story of self-discovery to speculative horror, as prejudices are drawn back in full force once a scapegoat is needed, making it most similar in structure to "Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones".

Stag Dance as a collection is brimming with anxiety; Peters' writes in her Acknowledgement that the stories, written over ten years, were a way of reckoning with aspects of transgender life that are difficult, or at least difficult to reduce to sound-bites. Many of the characters are unlikeable, or make flawed decisions that make sense, but may feel frustrating. This is not a feel-good collection, but perhaps more a compelling set of cautionary tales of bad boundaries amidst journeys of self-discovery. Provided a reader can roll with that, the stories are an intriguing mix, and an interesting catalog of Peters honing her craft.

I really enjoyed this collection! Some stories worked better for me compared to others but overall I was very impressed. The title story was, for me, the most challenging to get through, but I think that those types of frontier stories are not something I typically reach for. The final story was very impressive - it blew me away.

Wow, wow, WOW!

Thank you NetGalley, Torrey Peters, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was absolutely blown away by this. This is a collection of 4 novellas and each one is very different but all very trans with a lot of repeated themes. Each novella displays a mastery of both writing and storytelling.

Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones: sci-fi and dystopian and edging into horror. A trans woman creates a drug that completely turns off hormone production- and it’s contagious. The idea is that once it spreads everyone will have to choose their gender, but of course there are some unintended consequences. What I loved most about this was the incredibly toxic relationship between the narrator and her frenemy/ex-lover Lexi.

The Chaser: Another very toxic relationship, this time between two teenagers at boarding school. One of them coming to terms with their identity, the other coming to terms with his sexuality. There is a lot of drama, mixed signals, petty revenge and sabotage.

Stag Dance: The main novella and longest of the collection. Told from the POV of a Paul Bunyan type character who is part of an illegal logging operation. The manger decides to hold a stag dance where some of the men can choose to be treated like women if they wear a fabric triangle over their crotch. Paul Bunyan wants to wear a triangle, but he’s got some competition with the camp beauty named Lisen. And there is yet another toxic relationship between the two that are allies at times and other times…. Not.

The Masker: A horror(ish) story where the main character isn’t yet sure about their identity, but is experimenting with cross dressing and forced feminization erotica. Then they meet an older trans woman named Sally who takes them under her wing, but there’s also a mysterious “masker” who is kind of creepy but also kind of enticing.

let's see! ranking them from best to worst: Stag Dance - definitely best one in hte set by a LOT. 4.5 stars in and of itself, i liked it a LOT better than many of the others. it felt freer than them. just never really felt all that compelling. Next is The Masker, which is also ok but just didn't seem to quite pull off its themes well enough in my view. i can definitely see where Peters is coming from and the idea is great but it seems more like a 3.25-3.5 read. Next comes the chaser, which is fine too but has neither the really unique theme of The Masker or the great execution of Stag Dance. 3 stars. Lastly, we've got Infect your Friends and Loved Ones, which was just... myeh. the premise was awesome but i hated Lexi and i found the whole actual society generally... not reallly thought thru? one thing i REALLY wish i got smth about was just at least a mention of what it's like for enby people in that setting. the treatment of testostorone is a bit odd is unideal, too. 2.5 stars, maybe? in total, i'd give it around a 3.5 star rating? i WISH i liked this a lot more, Detransition baby was cool.

4 stars

Like many readers who will be drawn to this work, I LOVED _Detransition, Baby_. While this has a very different vibe, it is still extremely satisfying.

I often feel like the best approach to texts with complicated themes, characters, and identities is to know as little as possible on the way in, and that's my best suggestion for entering this text, minus one detail: this is not a novel but a collection of several works. Folks coming to this hoping for another fully evolved novel should adjust their expectations to match the format.

There is a lot to admire about this collection, but I especially appreciated the various approaches to transness, to sexuality, and to bodily explorations.

It is always a thrill to read Peters's work, and I look forward to doing that again soon!

Brilliant. "The Chaser" is ABSOLUTELY the standout story in this collection--one of the best short stories i've ever read. Harrowing, complex, complicated, thematically rich, beautifully written realist literature--that is, everything I look for when I read. The first and last novellas were originally self-published so I read them years ago, and they're as I remember; i especially loved Infect Your Friends... and it's great to see it traditionally published. "Stag Dance" was somewhat of a miss for me--I wasn't a huge fan of the voice (though that's more personal preference than any fault of Peters') but it did drag, my attention flagged, the themes of the text weren't as rich / interesting to me, and I do wonder if it needed to be that long.
That said, Stag Dance is essential reading for any fan of Peters' work. I'm impressed.

Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, Baby, is back with a new book, Stag Dance. The book itself not only contains the titular Stag Dance, but three other short stories: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones”, “The Chaser”, and “The Masker”. As Peters herself said, the goal of this book was to work through some of her own complicated feelings around her transition and social norms within the trans community. Each of the stories did just that from a different angle.

I didn’t realize going in that there were multiple stories in the book, nor what the book was even about. That made for a fun surprise! One thing I preferred about this book over other short story compilations such as Rainbow, Rainbow and Never Whistle at Night was that all four stories were long enough to feel like novels in and of themselves. Although only Stag Dance receives the title of novel (and even that was more of a novelette) according to the publisher’s description, they were longer than your typical short story in a way that was satisfying for me.

Of the four stories, my favorite was “The Chaser”. The book followed two roommates at a high school boarding school who were drawn together into a romantic fling despite their differences. I am always deferential towards realism in my fiction, and this—along with “The Masker”—were the two stories most grounded in modern day. The characters in “The Chaser”, particularly the POV character, was incredibly well-developed and I felt the anxiety of being a teenage boy come through off the pages. Even though it was short, it managed to pull me in and left me wanting more.

My least favorite story was the opening one, “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones”. It felt a bit too similar to Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, and my favorite character was the mostly off-screen antagonist Trish, which led to a very low level of emotional investment in the main character’s story. That being said, even that story I would have given three stars as a standalone.

Stag Dance itself was a beautiful story about an alternate world (post-apocalyptic? a century earlier?) where a camp of men are illegally felling timber over the winter for a paycheck. Excitement comes to camp when there’s an announcement of a “Stag Dance”, a prom-like activity where some volunteers will wear a triangle bush over their privates to convey that they wish to be courted. Our main character is huge and ugly, but they deeply wish to wear the triangle and ultimately she does. While I have qualms with the ending specifically, I loved the story and the world Peters created here.

For the final chapter, Peters takes us to Los Vegas with a 20-something maybe-trans-maybe-cross-dresser to a trans woman party weekend. I would say that this was the story people will feel most conflicted about; as a story, I loved it but the politics are complicated and I don’t think it’s necessarily my right to weigh in there. I can see people having spirited debates about the main character’s actions and even the writing of the story itself. To me, that makes it a story worth telling—it’s adding to conversation while also creating it.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Peters’ second book and will be ordering copies of everything she writes in the future. Her writing style is haunting and she manages to create worlds that feel unique and fully formed regardless of whether it takes place at a regular old boarding school or an a world entirely of her own invention.

Detransition, Baby was my favorite book of 2021. I have been anxiously awaiting a follow-up from Peters and was so happy to finally get one., even if it's not what I ultimately wanted. I was disappointed to see this is three short stories and a novella, with all the short stories having previously been published in some format. The only totally new piece here is the title novella, and it's probably the weakest entry in the collection. It took me way too long to get used to the writing style in Stag Dance, with its use of old-timey frontier language, and I didn't find the plot all that compelling. I would have much rather seen Infect Your Friends.... expanded upon or spent more time in the boarding school of The Chaser.

Overall, a thought-provoking but poorly-paced and uneven collection that is sometimes beautiful but sometimes flat.

I enjoyed Detransition, Baby, so I was excited to see another work from Torrey Peters. These shorter stories and one longer one make up a unique experience encompassing different points in time and space. I liked how she showed us a version of the future where people had to actively and conscientiously choose their gender. It felt particularly apt for current times when many people don't understand how even cis folks engage in the performance of gender. The longer story for which the book is named was a little hard to get into at the start, but was fascinating precisely because it took me somewhere I hadn't pictured and couldn't easily picture. The story got me to travel there and its uniqueness held me there.