What a phenomenal, special novel. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone. Peters is a fantastic writer and the prose feels very fresh and original. There's wonderfully dry, dark humor throughout, and the voice (especially for Reese) is vivid and engaging. My only cons were that in portions of the book (some dialogue, for example), some of the content felt geared toward cis het people, very explanatory. Ultimately, this doesn't take away from my love of the book, but did surprise me, as 95% of the book is so resistant to what I would call the cishet gaze.

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and author Torrey Peters for providing me with the title Detransition, Baby (and for granting my wish!)

Wow, what an amazing, amazing novel! This was not was I was expecting; I was thoroughly pleased with what I got to read. I got to learn sooo much about Transgender culture while reading this. I was able to put myself in someone else’s shoes, someone completely different from me. And that is a wonderful gift that Peters has shared with us all. I felt very, very emotional while reading this. I cannot wait to grab a physical edition, I for sure want this on my shelf!

Thank you again to those named above for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

This novel involves several intersecting transgender lives, some who are ex- lovers, some who are friends with benefits, some who are mortal enemies. None of the characters seem particularly interesting and they all seem to be very enthralled with the violence, drugs, and promiscuous sex in their lives. A lot of BDSM and alternative sexuality is fantasized and described vividly. It seems that the people in this book court disaster in their relationships. They all seem like distasteful people, and the one thing they have in common is their trangenderness. This novel is about what I am presuming is the underbelly of the transgender community. Not recommended and possibly triggering for abuse survivors.

In a completely unexpected way, I was blown away by Detransition, Baby. It is an Own Voices novel primarily about transwomen in New York City, but is also about so, so much more. The main character, Reese, is complex and mysterious, and yet vulnerable and transparent in so many ways. She was in a relationship with Amy, another transwoman, but we meet Amy as Ames after he has de-transitioned. I have never read about detransitioning and so this was a completely new concept to me. This alone would have made for an informative and engaging book, but another layer of complication is added when Ames impregnates his boss/lover, Katrina, a divorcee with her own reasons for feeling ambivalent about pregnancy. Torrey Peters masterfully weaves the story together by going back and forth through time to show how Reese and Ames ended up in their present situation, which, by the way, doesn't get neatly resolved in the end.
Peters is particularly good at revealing the innermost thoughts of her characters in a way that feels utterly real. She evokes the kind of empathy for her characters that would be hard to do normally, but perhaps harder still in a society that is still incredibly transphobic. Yes, many of the issues were specific to transwomen, but there were also more universal issues addressed, such as how we as individuals cope with trauma and what it means to be a parent or seek parenthood. It would be reductive to simply call this a trans novel because it is that and so much more. I will definitely be going back and seeking Peters' other works and look forward to a long and fruitful career for her!

This book is the first I’ve ever read that featured trans characters, and I loved it overall. Reese and Ames were characters I rooted for, and enjoyed hearing about their journey. This book stands out from others I have read this year, and I’m going to recommend it to my friends.

This story was not what I expected at all. I learned a lot about trans culture, and their lives. I put myself into a new mindset through Reese, Ames, and their friends. I have never viewed the world through the eyes of a trans person before, and this book gave me a little peek. I feel like I learned a new outlook on motherhood and even relationships through the process of this story.
Very emotional.

If "The Corrections" and "The Object of My Affection" had a trans, millennial baby who was jaded and twice as smart as either of her fathers, she would be this book. "Detransition, Baby," my favorite read so far of 2020, is a witty, humane exploration of identity, womanhood, and the search for love and family that refuses easy answers, or any answers at all.

The narrative alternates between the POV of ex-girlfriends Reese and Ames, whose takes-two-to-tango breakup left both of them with lingering scars that make stable love feel impossible,

Reese, a 34-year-old white, trans woman, craves the kind of normalcy (husband, children, nice clothes) afforded to the cis women with whom she identifies, even as she pursues affairs with married cis men who treat her badly, and has given up any belief in fairy tale endings. Ames--formerly Amy, and before that, James--reverted to living as a man after their breakup, even as he privately still feels himself to be a woman. The dissonance between his inner and outer selves allow him to exist in a kind of protective numbness, in which his emotions and his wants can remain equally hypothetical. When Ames gets his boss/secret girlfriend, Katrina, pregnant, his and Reese's lost dream of shared motherhood comes surging back to the surface, where it begins to cause problems all over again.

Every element of this book, from the prose, to the characters (each of the three women so different from one another), to the ending, manages to be accessible without sacrificing realness or artistic beauty. What's more, Torres Peters has written something wholly original: a novel about trans lives that skips over the educating-cis-people and pleasing-the-queer-masses part, in favor of nuanced depiction of real, idiocratic people who are representative of only themselves.

Reese and Ames aren't the postergirls for anything. Reese, whose clever critiques of queer political righteousness are what most queers would consider unspeakable in mixed company, knowingly accepts male abuse as an affirmation of her womanhood even as she knows she knows better. On the surface, appears to be the poster*boy* for TERF arguments about biological absolutism. But Ames' relationship to gender is far more complex than anything packaged by a political argument. He has not returned to the right body any more than he is trapped in the wrong one; he is simply trying to find a way to balance the painful exposure of being his desired self with the need to get through to the next day. Katrina, the cis woman in this triangle, makes space for a straight perspective, but an ambivalent one (torn between a movie-fantasy of queer family and a craving for heteronormative "stability"), and is adept at calling Reese and Ames on their mutual bullshit.

As an embittered, "elder millennial," trans reader, this book was a gift that I already want to reopen: a book written for people like me, that I can also share with my literary fiction-reading aunts and uncles (so long as they promise we won't talk about the sex). May it be the first of many.

This thoughtful title asks the reader to grapple with notions of motherhood, self identity and community. What does it truly mean to parent. And how do our often contradictory selves influence how we love one another. It centers trans voices. Well done and lovely.