Despite having a stable job, financial independence, and a published poetry collection, she feels adrift—haunted by dysphoria, failed relationships, and the pressure to conform to a version of adulthood that doesn’t quite fit. Max is forced to confront what forgiveness, love, and identity really mean.

It’s a rare book that treats trans characters with full emotional depth, not as symbols but as flawed, fully human protagonists.

Thank you to NetGalley, Doubleday (UK)/Harper (US) for this arc!

Excellent literary fiction read, kept me engaged throughout. Messy relationship and trans people. Very interesting and a little bit different from my normal read's. I would read from this author again. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read.
4 star

Devoured 🤌🏼

I love a messy relationship book so much and this hit. I loved the writing and the audio was fantastic. It was so interesting to see Vincent's back story from his point of view and I was rooting so hard for Max!!

This was a bit too Sally Rooney for this reader, but people LOVE Sally Rooney and those people should run for Disappoint Me.

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan is a sharp, tender, and emotionally layered exploration of identity, love, and the ghosts we carry into our most intimate connections.

At its core, this is a story about two people, Max and Vincent, trying to build something meaningful despite all the things that threaten to undo them. Max, a trans woman who is tired of compromising herself in dating, finds a surprising connection with Vincent, a man who seems open, kind, and different. But what begins as something gentle and affirming soon reveals its complications, especially when Vincent’s past resurfaces.

Dinan writes the relationship between Max and Vincent with such realism that it feels both aspirational and precarious. You root for them, even when the cracks start to show. The dialogue is whip-smart, the insights cutting, and the emotional stakes are real. Dinan captures the subtle tensions of intimacy with incredible precision: how desire is tangled with perception, how gender politics shape even the smallest gestures, and how trust can be both built and undone by silence.

At times, I wanted just a bit more breathing room to understand Vincent's inner world. But that’s a minor quibble in a novel so rich with tension, honesty, and compassion.

This is a story about who we are when we’re seen, when we’re scared, and when we’re trying, imperfectly, to love.

I DEVOURED this book! I couldn't put it down. It is so layered as it explores the trans experience across race and class and shifting public and political attitudes. The writing is so good I felt like all of the characters were completely relatable even as they had experiences no where close to my own.

I thought this was an incredibly thought provoking read. I loved the fact that it is a story about a trans woman in the dating world, but it was also a story about two humans dating. I feel like it advanced progressive thinking without aggressively trying to, and it's a gorgeous story that would recommend to anyone who enjoys literary fiction.

This book is a story of Max, a trans woman turning thirty, and her relationship with Vincent, a kind and stable man, maybe too good to be true. Told in alternating timelines - Max's present-day narrative and Vincent's decade-old travels in Thailand.

The story is both raw and tender, prose so beautiful. The descriptions of food were simply mouth-watereing. This book really captures the essence of millenial relationships in this time and age that we live in.

Shortly after we meet Max, she tumbles down a flight of stairs at a New Year's Eve party. The fall is serious enough to land her in the emergency room (which she exits as quickly as possible, not unlike the party that got her there in the first place). While the fall didn't help Max's steadily growing disillusionment, it did prompt her to seek some kind of change. The easiest place to start? Dating apps.

Max wasn't expecting to find someone who cracked her open so completely, but there was Vincent, immediately making everything feel so easy. So soft. It's difficult for her to fully trust Vincent. Could this straight, clean-cut, lawyer really love her so completely? Could his traditional-minded Chinese parents welcome their son's trans partner into their family? It all feels so precarious, but Max can't walk away yet. She has to see if they can make it. She has to give herself the chance at the kind of care she'd long written off as impossible.

As their relationship continues to grow, Max and Vincent find themselves bombarded with obstacles that force their relationship through what feels like years of agonizing tests in only a matter of months. Max and Vincent have to confront each other's complex pasts to cope with growing obstacles of the present, but can that possibly leave enough room for a future together?


Disappoint Me grabbed my attention quicker than anything I've read recently. Dinan's voice is so clear and commanding while maintaining an ease that made Max real from the very first page. She seamlessly built Max's world with the same level of care, crafting a network of family and friends that felt vibrant without overtaking Max's personal journey. Switching voices with Vincent every few chapters was just as effective, and it offered an honest look into this person coming into Max's orbit, allowing the reader to peek behind the curtain to draw their own conclusions while Max contemplated hers. Really just wonderful.

I hadn't heard anything about this book when I was offered a copy but I'm really glad I accepted it. I really enjoyed this book and I am so glad we are getting more books with a trans woman narrator.

This book alternates timelines, we see Max in present day as she is trying to figure out her life and then meeting Vincent. We see Vincent as a high school graduate on a trip to Thailand, where events happen that will impact his present day.

I loved the Vincent in Thailand parts as I've traveled a lot in Thailand and could so vividly picture everything described. I enjoyed reading about Max's life and she figures things out, and I loved the start of their relationship.

I didn't love the ending -- but that didn't take away too much of my enjoyment of the book overall.

I'm excited to read more by Nicola Dinan in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Disappoint Me was a very refreshing and entertaining my book that I couldn’t put down. Nicola Dinan has such a great way of writing that immediately pulls the reader in. I also really enjoyed Max as a character.

I think Disappoint Me is best going into it knowing as little as possible! Here's what I think you need to know: Max is a trans woman who is 30, but, after a break-up, is not flirty and thriving. She falls at a party, and this is the catalyst for her making some changes, which leads her to Vincent. Vincent is a caring, kind dude who has some secret baggage.

Told in Max's present and Vincent's past, the story is heavily character driven, and feels so despondent and transformative. Max is endearing and relatable, even when making poor decisions. She wants this beautiful life, but real life has microaggressions, best friends who also sometimes kinda suck, realizing that you yourself kinda suck, family and the issues they have that you are part of, and falling in love, but not knowing someone 100%. I thought it was so perfectly done how it could be kinda hard (as the reader) to initially love Max, but so easy to initially love Vincent. This story is absolutely, people grow and change, but does that change change how you view them, or do you hold their past over them forever? Not just with Max and Vincent, but with their families as well.

Obviously the more I reflect, the more I am realizing about this book. I absolutely recommend it, especially if you want some sort of depressing but also not fiction. I've been thinking about it ever since I finished it two weeks ago.

Thanks to The Dial Press and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

This story is alternately narrated by Max and her boyfriend Vincent. Max’s chapters showcase Dinan’s talent with characterization: they read like a memoir. Max experiences universals such as insecurity, vulnerability, dissatisfaction with life, the need for reassurance. Layered on these things is the hurtful feelings that she is bad news to break, that she is treated as if something is wrong with her. She is reflective and self-aware. On the other hand, Vincent’s character seems flat when he’s on stage with Max. That changes when he takes over point of view narration. It’s ten years in the past, and he and his friend Fred are on their gap year in Thailand. Vincent meets Alex at a hostel and is instantly attracted to her. It upsets him when he finds out she’s transgender.

“I’m pissed, though, because out of all the girls I could have met at a hostel while traveling, why did the one I like have to be trans?”

When Fred arrives, he and Alex hit it off, which makes Vincent jealous. He knows Fred’s history and can predict his reaction if he knew why Alex was in Thailand. How Vincent handles his friendship with Alex and her interest in Fred will speak to his character. A decade later, Max is in his life. Is he proving something to himself? When she needs him, will he be there for her? The question of whether people change is the crux.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House | The Dial Press and NetGalley for providing this e-galley.

After the tepid launch of her poetry collection and a humiliatingly disastrous New Years Eve, Max, an early thirties trans woman and London resident, decides it’s time she get back on the dating scene. Unexpectedly, she quickly falls for Vincent, an affluent cis man who is still very much tied to his bougie friends and traditional Chinese parents. As their relationship grows more serious and the differences between her social circle of queer artists and Vincent’s wealthy, corporate life grow more apparent, Max must decide if she is in love with a man or her proximity to heteronormativity. And this is before Vincent’s complicated past is revealed. Nicola Dinan has written one of the sharpest and most emotionally vulnerable novels on the complicated dynamic of dating cisgender straight men as a trans woman. Disappoint Me does not shy away from the ugly and violent shadow cast by patriarchal gender norms and fragile masculinity but avoids spiraling into romantic doomerism or simplistic portrayals of trans panic. Dinan’s characters are too complex and genuine to live in that sort of story.

Disappoint Me is Nicola Dinan’s much anticipated second novel. I loved her debut novel Bellies so I was thrilled to receive this as an ARC, from NetGalley.

At the centre of Disappoint Me, is the relationship between Max and Vincent. However this book is so much more than a love story. This is a book about identity, race, millennial angst, family and friendship.

It begins with a fall at a New Years Eve party that leaves Max unconscious and hospitalised. Max, keen to get home discharges herself before getting the scan she has been advised to have. What follows is Max’s attempt at a hetronormative relationship with Vincent, a man she meets through a dating app.

Alongside the story of Max and Vincent’s relationship, is a narrative in which Vincent’s past unfolds, revealing his own baggage, which could have a devastating impact on his relationship with Max.

Disappoint Me is so well written, I particularly enjoyed Max’s unsentimental view of the world which highlights a certain ennui that can be felt in the world right now. Another important aspect of this book is the exploration of what it is to be a trans woman, with Dinan posing questions that really make the reader think. These questions aren’t answered and I think that is the beauty of the book. Life is messy, we don’t have all the answers, however it is important to ask these questions as it's how we learn to understand each other.

Disappoint Me did just that. This book felt confused, like it wanted to be a deep dive into a relationship and identity but missed the mark.

Honestly, it was kinda boring. I didn’t really care for the mc, I found her annoying in a lot of ways. I never felt very invested in her story and I never really cared about Max and Vincent’s relationship. I feel like in books where not much happens you need to have really strong character development and this book didn’t do that well.

I did appreciate what the author was trying to do with this book and really liked that it was told from the perspective of a trans woman. I think these stories are important and this was one of the aspects that drew me to read this novel. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel connected to this book.

I should have followed my instincts and DNfed it.

this book starts off as one book and ends as another. i loved the first part. it follows max, a thirty-something trans woman and poet-turned-lawyer, as she stumbles, literally and figuratively, into a relationship with vincent, a corporate type with a soft heart and a fondness for baking. their dynamic is complicated from the start, and the novel asks sharp, layered questions about gender, identity, and intimacy. is a cis man dating a trans woman in a heterosexual relationship? does a trans person have a moral obligation to disclose their transness? does someone owe their family an explanation about their partner's body? the book never pretends these questions have easy answers, and i appreciated that.

max's narration is funny, jagged, self-aware - very phoebe waller-bridge, but with more sadness simmering underneath. she's grasping for something solid in a world that keeps shifting. in her thirties, she starts reaching for the things she thinks she's supposed to want: stability, a good man, a sensible kitchen. and suddenly she's waking up in a heteronormative life she didn't entirely mean to build. the book is really good at sitting in that unease. that feeling of: everyone else has this, so maybe i should too.

the second half of the book shifts to vincent's perspective and reveals a much darker backstory. during a gap year in thailand, teenage vincent did something horrific. out of jealousy, he outed a trans woman to a friend, who then brutally attacked her. the tone of the book changes here. it moves from intimate and emotionally sharp to something more sprawling, almost like a morality play. and while it's written with care, i found myself wishing we'd stayed in the first book, the quieter one, where two people were just trying to figure their shit out.

vincent's voice is distinct and his character is complex, but it was harder to stay emotionally engaged. he begins the novel with the energy of a disney prince - thoughtful, attentive, almost too good to be true. and in a way, he is. what the novel explores, with increasing urgency, is the split between how people present themselves and who they really are. max isn't immune to this either. both characters are caught in their own performances of acceptability, of maturity, of progress.

and while the book doesn't offer neat resolutions, it does suggest that choosing a life just because it looks right from the outside isn't enough. max has to reckon with that, and it's one of the novel's strongest thoughts. just because everyone seems to be settling down doesn't mean it's the right move for you. just because you're in your thirties doesn't mean you’re done figuring yourself out.

ultimately, disappoint me is about identity and how fragile it is, how easily warped by expectation and guilt. i didn't love every part of it. but i admired the mess, the questions it asked, and the voice it gave to a woman trying to make sense of love, self, and survival under the weight of what's expected.

Clever and cutting with moments of vulnerability that shine through. Dinan writes with dry wit and emotional clarity. The protagonist’s inner journey is sharp and relatable, even when messy. Not everyone will love the tone, but I appreciated the honesty

I usually love dual POV but one half just fell flat for me. I loved Max, she was complex and interesting, I was begging for more on her life then she started dating Vincent. The most boring man. I loved how Max looked at life, her parts were beautiful and deep. Then there was 19yr old Vincent and I was dreading each installment, only growing to hate him more. His half was so forgettable then I wanted to forget it. I don't know, I wanted more I guess, the writing was what kept me going I just wish I remembered more.

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