This was my second book by Nicola Dinan, and I was just as quickly captivated by the storyline as I was with the first. Her remarkable talent for bringing these intricate characters to life, coupled with her captivating dual timeline, made this a truly enjoyable read. Max was a captivating character, and I thoroughly enjoyed delving into her intricate relationships.

I will eagerly continue to follow Dinan’s work to discover what her next story holds.

I am grateful to the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read this upcoming novel.

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.

Disappoint Me did not disappoint me at all!
This books writing was very well done throughout the duel narratives and different timelines. Brought to life is a story of a trans women's journey through her 3o's and taking a go at a heteronormative relationship.
As chaotic as Max was introduced to us, I could not help but love her. This is definitely all to do with the great writing and story telling by Nicola Dinan.
As this is my first book by this author I have been seeing hype for another one of her works called Bellies so I will definitely have to check that one out!

Max is a 30 year old transgender woman and poet with a law degree working as an AI Robot and she just started dating Vincent, a multicultural corporate lawyer who can’t stomach telling his dad that he’s dating a trans woman.

We get dual pov’s here where Max’s chapters are set in London 2023 navigating old and new relationships and Vincent’s are in 2012 on a gap year trip to Thailand, making mistakes that are bound to follow him into the future.

I was first impressed by how real this felt. I recognize these scenarios and feelings. And having someone put them into words feels like home. Vincent's multicultural struggles are parallel to my own and exploring your heritage is rarely an adventure, it’s hard and heavy.

The book is also very funny, without being comedic. It’s funny the way life is funny and it feels effortless without feeling like it’s set up or trying too hard.
It’s poignant and raw, screaming with millennial angst, regret and nostalgia for the future.
Dinan has a talent for writing complex characters, they felt so real to me. Their insecurities, their shame, their longing and wanting for something they can’t quite put their finger on. I was completely engrossed in their stories.
If you’ve ever felt lost and confused about life, this book is a great companion. It won’t give you direction or a lecture, but it will show you that you’re not alone.
Highly recommend!

** A copy of Disappoint Me was provided by the publisher and NetGalley/Edelweiss+ in exchange for an honest review **

I loved Nicola Dinan's Bellies and I was so excited to get an ARC of Disappoint Me. Disappoint Me does not disappoint. While Bellies was about the messiness of your post-university life and early 20s, Disappoint Me is about the messiness of your late 20s and early 30s. It tackles a range of issues such as gender identity, relationships, forgiveness, friendship and family dynamics. I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the last quarter of the book. Nicola Dinan is a very skilled writer - there are so many sections I underlined and will keep going back to. I can't wait for what she does next. She's one to watch and has quickly become one of my favourite authors.

4.5 stars!

I read this book because of Torrey Peters quoted praise in the NetGalley description (p.s. thank you to the publisher for approving my request). Having read Detransition, Baby and the digital arc of Stag Dance (eternally grateful for that as well), I more than trust Torrey Peters as a writer and so I took a chance on her as a reviewer. And I'm glad I did!

Disappoint Me was a really great modern romance (not least in part because it had so much more than the relationship between its two leads, Max and Vincent), sharing the touching, the mundane, and the complicated moments of a burgeoning relationship through to the moments when it becomes really tested. These moments are interspersed with the other going-ons of Max's life, including her job, her friendship with Simone, who she has known since before she transitioned and before Simone came out as a lesbian, and who has had her back always, and her participation in an old school friends wedding party. It's this combination of focuses, where Max's life is shown not to be driven exclusively by and toward love, with every subplot somehow carrying her magically closer to Vincent, but where instead love simply figures as the important thing it is for her, that makes the book work as a romance (which, yes, is silly to hone in on, the love I mean, after mentioning how important it is that Max had more going on in her life but alas, you get it. It's how every Jane Austen novel is also something more.)

The more that's going on is wonderful though, and no matter how the story ends (which I will remain mum on to keep interested parties in suspense), getting to watch Max move and change through the novel and hearing her thoughts is rewarding and well worth the read.

While you get to experience Max's present, Vincent's chapters come in from the past, hinting at some major event to be revealed that will shake up what Max and Vincent are to each other. There are hints of this subtly laid about in the present, and comparing past Vincent to current Vincent, who is much more emotionally and mentally mature, while getting these little blips popping up gives a really interesting, real example of how a person can change and not change over time.

There's more to talk about and dig in on, and a lot of this book is about how much the past affects the present and the future, but I don't want to say much more than the vague blah I've shared here. I will add that any doubt I might have had about this book was quashed when Max heard the line "Strange how a phone call can change your day, take you away," from Labi Siffre and thought it was one of the most beautiful lyrics ever written. Because I agree.

I had never heard of Nicola Dinan, but as soon as I saw the absolutely hilarious cover art and was immediately like "Hey, she looks how I feel!", I knew that this was a book I had to read, even if I had to wait until May when it's officially released. I was so lucky and thankful to be granted an arc of this! I expected (or rather really, really wanted) to love this book, and.......it was even better than I had hoped!!

Nicola Dinan is a master storyteller. Right from the jump, I was completely hooked and obsessed with Max and her friends, and I especially loved the setting- New Years in London! Max’s New Year’s resolution, you ask? Well, to find a boyfriend:!

The main narration is told from Max in 2023, but we also get glimpses into the man of the hour Vincent’s perspective during a pivotal gap year trip to Thailand back in 2012. I enjoyed both timelines in equal measure. Dinan has a gift for creating characters that really leap off the page, and needless to say, I was utterly gripped from start to finish.

The social commentary was also spot on and Dinan's emotionally charged storytelling didn't miss a single time.

"Disappoint Me" is incredibly witty, fiery, and fierce, Thank you so much to NetGalley, Nicola Dinan, and Random House for the arc!

Kind of boring. But the writing was beautiful.

I feel like I can’t really give much feedback because I don’t think I fully grasped what was going on. This sign really a book I would pick up, so it was better than I was expecting. But it also doesn’t stand out to me. This book doesn’t make me want to drop everything I’m doing and read more like it.

But I do applaud the author for not only finishing this book, but having a gorgeous writing style.

An emotional and reflective exploration of the relationships that have built us, and continue to shape us. Nicola Dinan writes characters with such depth and the (at times) painful reality that our flaws and experiences make us so human. The main characters Max and Vincent possess very distinct voices, moving us through their stories along with their friends and families. Many complex topics are covered and some of the characters make terrible, devastating decisions- and they must ask themselves and each other, "Should I forgive? What does forgiveness look like?".

Despite the heavy themes, there is a charm and a hopefulness that permeates this story. I will be thinking about it for a good while! I am looking forward to reading more from Nicola Dinan! Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC.

Dinan did an amazing job of writing a compelling story about identity and relationships through a queer and trans lens. The two main characters’ flaws moved the story along and created a poetic story of love, betrayal and acceptance. I wasn’t 100% sure how I would feel in the beginning but I quickly grew to love the characters and was deeply invested in this raw and realistic depiction that makes it relatable but still entertaining and eye opening. The ending left me with so many questions which can be poetic in a sense, but left me wanting more!

This was a fantastic read. I was a little wary for the first 50 pages or so, but once I dug in I was hooked. The writing is beautiful and evocative. She writes characters so well - for a short novel there was an impressive amount of depth and development to the characters, even minor ones. She writes vulnerability and uncertainty so clearly. The theme of forgiveness ran through the narrative, and I particularly liked some scenes between Max and her dad. Every character was imperfect, but we care about them, anyway.

I loved how beautifully written this story was. I was swept into the story pretty much immediately due to the writing alone. I love the intricacies of the relationships in this story - not only the MCs, but of everyone, whether it was friendship, family, work, or more. Forgiveness and acceptance were main themes, and I love how complex the topics are. The characters were all so well done and I was equally interested in all of them. If anything, read this one for the beautiful writing alone!

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.

"Time is kinder to men, even gay men."

I requested this book, because I LOVED the cover. I have always felt a strong kinship to A Decadent Young Woman. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This book had ALL of the emotions. Literally, I felt them all. It's a story about a trans-woman, I'm not even trans and I could relate SO much. I highlighted half of the book, and I don't even get to keep this copy because it's an ARC (please don't come for me about how many quotes I put in this review).

"Can finding a boyfriend be my New Year's resolution? Can that be something that a person resolves to do? Is feminism dead?"Girl same.

"It is said--in the Bible, I'm sure--that men know within seconds of meeting you whether they'd like to sleep with you. What an incredible burden. How much sweat, chemical exfoliant and ripped activewear is laid at the alter to shift those odds. And so preoccupied with our supplication, we barely consider our attraction to them, if at all. Release me from my chains, I beg." I feel that.

"I am aware that there was a shift--sometime after Arthur--when I stopped caring about flutters and cared more for caring, for feeling like a priority. When I stopped questioning if I found people hot and thought more about whether they were nice. When things stopped being about what someone was, who their friends were, what they did for work, and more about how they were."RIGHT! Like only going for hot assholes is a canon event, but we all get over that eventually.

And while I cannot relate to the trans experience specifically, I can empathize with it. The writing in this book was pure art. I'm not joking when I say I highlighted half of the book. Every other paragraph felt so profound. Like the author was pulling feelings from my head, and forming them into cohesive sentences.

"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 is a tragedy?"

I feel I must tell you about some other major themes in this book. This book is duel POV with our FMC being a transgender woman, 1/4th Asian, and struggling to enjoy the prime of her life. In our MMC's POV, we actually travel back in time to his college gap year, and one of the biggest regrets of his life. He too is part Asian and grapples with staying true to himself vs. doing what he thinks his parents would want him to do. When his mistakes come to haunt him, he is forced to reflect. Has he really changed? Or has he let this mistake define him? Or is he both the boy who made a mistake and the man who learned from it?

This would've been a five star had the ending not been so abrupt. I get that it was poetic, just like the rest of the book, but I NEEDED MORE!!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the opportunity to read the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book and after reading the “blurb” it wasn’t at all what I expected. Part of the description contains the line “Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.” My idea of a trad wife comes from the content makers on Instagram. I thought maybe the book would be more snarky. The book is actually a well written examination of friendship and relationships as people move into their 30’s. It just so happens the main character Max is trans. The tumble down the stairs does not instantly cause Max to wake up as a “trad wife”. The story begins at New Year’s Eve party where Max is unhappy and recently single feeling like she is floundering. Back on the dating apps she meets Vincent and begins dating which leads to a relationship. Vincent’s friend group is considered “trad” which I now understand it means something different than instagram content makers. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the arc:

I want to start with how much I loved the writing in this. Nicola Dinan is effortlessly funny and clever, and then will turn around with the most heartbreaking line you've ever heard all within one paragraph. She also writes in a way that is impossible to put down. Every time I picked this up I became entranced. The dialogue flows easily and is believable, the inner turmoil that Max (and Vincent) experience is tangible. Her characters are very real and incredibly flawed, but easy to love, until they aren't.

I loved Max as the lead in this. She is deeply insecure and so incredibly smart. She is empathetic but she can be mean. She is varied and full of life. Living in her head broke my heart because I saw her virtues so much clearer than she did. I wanted to tell her she is loved and deserves happiness, comfort, and to not feel like such a burden. She is a rich character that I found myself so enamored to almost immediately.

The relationship between Max and Vincent was done very well in this also. They struggle when Vincent is ignorant about what it means to be trans and missteps. It's a real relationship, it isn't idealized and it doesn't feel fake. They felt like people I might know. And I probably would have told her to leave him a couple times. They were so real that I could understand Max's choice in the end, not that I agreed with it.

I can't get too into the main conflict in the third act without spoiling things, but I will say it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly angry. This was the point, I know that. But I can't help but think that maybe it could have been handled differently. The book has a very realistic take on the conflict, but I guess what I was hoping for was some theatric retribution. This wouldn't make sense in the book, but I hoped for more comeuppance regardless.

Overall, I really loved this. And I will definitely be pursuing Nicola Dinan's previous work, as well as what she does next.

Disappoint Me follows Max and Vincent as they navigate their new relationship. Weighed down by past mistakes the two wonder if what they have is something real, something that can last, can they weather the storm on the horizon? We meet Max at a New Year's Eve party, she's recovering from a break-up and wondering what her next steps are. A few weeks later she meets Vincent on a dating app. This could be the start of something wonderful. But, Max has got baggage, she's trans and Vincent is cis, her queer friends question her desire for a hetero-sexual relationship and there's something about Vincent that might be off- or maybe it's just her fear of commitment.

Exploring multiple layers of the modern dating experience, examining relationships through a queer lens, Disappoint Me contains multitudes. As the characters navigate traditional parents, Asian diaspora and immigrant experiences and the moral dilemmas of modern dating the reader gets a unique view of trans life that is seldom seen in media.

For fans of Sally Rooney and Naosie Dolan- who maybe wish those books were a littler less heteronormative, Disappoint Me is an exciting new addition to the modern canon of disaffected 20-somethings living in the UK.

Nicola Dinan is a genius at writing compelling and real characters. This book may have just suffered from having too many of them.

I enjoyed Max and Vincent’s storyline, the dual timelines, the way they navigated their relationships, and the unfortunate parallels between the timelines. However, there were so many characters and so many small plot lines that made it hard to follow. For the first half of the book I had no idea where it was going, though it became a lot more clear in the second half.

Dinan is a great writer and after Bellies, I will continue to read anything she releases. This one unfortunately just ended up falling a bit flat.

I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did!! I felt such a kinship with Max - her voice was very distinct, and by the time she met Vincent and we saw how their story progressed both as individuals and as a couple, I truly could not put this book down. What a genius touch to end with one of Max's poems. I can't wait to read more of Nicola Dinan's work!

Wow. Nicola Dinan has so beautifully captured what it feels like to be trans today. Through thoughtful prose and sharp dialogue, you can feel the heaviness of Max & Alex’s many disappointments, the fatigue that comes with repeatedly having to tell (cis) people what is and is not appropriate to say, and the aching pain of someone close letting you down. I will be thinking about these characters and their conversations for many years to come. This was my first read of Nicola’s work, and it certainly will not be my last. I cannot wait to add the hardcopy to my shelf. Thank you for this!

Nicola Dinan, the writer that you are 🙇‍♀️ I just can’t get over how much the writing style is just my inner dialogue. 100% a new auto buy author.

Dinan has such unique ability to bring out the absolute worst traits in people and make them the parts I love most.