Perfect for Pride Month! This is the story of Max, a trans woman searching for companionship while navigating the emotional complexities of her life. It’s a compelling journey of self-evolution, learning to understand, forgive, and truly love yourself, even through shame and guilt.
The novel is thought-provoking, exploring different facets of trans experiences, anti-androgens, identity, truth, lies and the gray areas in between, all through the lens of Max and a cis man who's on his own path of self-discovery.
The way the past and present intertwine creates a space where real growth happens, for both of them. A moving, insightful read that speaks to the human experience, no matter who you are.

⁕ Disappoint Me | Nicola Dinan ⁕
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ➍.𝟻 /𝟻 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚜
𝙿𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜: 𝟹𝟶𝟿

Thank you partner The Dial Press, Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the Advanced Copy of this beautiful story!

About the Book:
An electrifying story of love, betrayal, and the complicated allure of bougie domesticity.

ＡＲＣ ＲＥＶＩＥＷ
💭 𝚖𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜:

I saved this review for June and I’m so glad I did.
I absolutely loved this book.
Disappoint me is a phenomenal book and written with transparency through the eyes of two lovers, Max, a trans woman entering a new relationship, and then in the other we have Vincent, the person she has begun seeing. Nicola brings both sides and worlds to life so beautifully.

As their relationship deepens, their worlds collide and family issues develop on both sides. Vincent’s father has a heart attack that shocks his entire family and has Vincent in a predicament to care for his father. But while Vincent is away more things unravel as things come out about is gap year in Thailand with his best friend and a mystery woman. These events paint him out to be more sinister and his real intentions on why he’s with Max in the first place.

I really loved how tender this story is. There is blended humor with the serious moments so well, that the characters really come to life. I particularly love the examinations of modern marriage/ relationship via a trans woman, gay woman, and cis straight man's perspective. While there are definitely different experiences and difficulties experienced by various demographics, I also love that Dinan writes about the similarities shared between all of us. The self doubts, the loneliness, and the delicate balance between wanting to be a good person vs wanting to feel good.

As I really took my time processing this book it really pulled my heartstrings. It’s not one to rush!
I recommend this book to anyone who would love to step into something transparent and different but is open minded and loves a beautifully written story you will want to fully digest!

⁕ PUB DATE: May 26, 2025
Disappoint Me is brought to you by Nicola Dinan and The Dial Press!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for reaching out with the e-arc of this book.

3,5 ⭐️
These was a very interesting read, with some point to reflect on.
The story is told in two POVs and two timelines, a way of writing that always gets to me.
I don’t want to spoil much on the plot, because i found it very nice to go into this book knowing very little, and what I mean is that the book follows the story of Max, a trans woman, and her relationships, romantic and non.

I do think this book bring up very interesting discussion points, and questions that I asked myself before. I’ll leave here one of the best passages:

“there’s a life in which bad doesn’t always multiply, where the tide shifts, where awful things make people better. This is also the world where people, often women, are doomed to spend much of their lives forgiving the errors of others and suffering for the sake of other people’s growth. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but leave, and sometimes there’s nothing to do but forgive.”

Beautifully written and poignant, I was swept away by Max and Vincent's story. The only way Disappoint Me disappointed me is that I was left craving more!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

This book blew me away and is definitely going to be one of my top reads of 2025. It's an incredibly powerful, emotional story that explores how we present ourselves to others and who people really are beneath the surface.

Max and Vincent meet through a dating app and hit it off right away. Max is coming off of a difficult break-up from a long-term relationship, and is intrigued by how easy it is being with Vincent. As they begin seeing each other, we learn more about Vincent's traditional Chinese family and his past history dating another trans woman, Alex, during a gap year in Thailand a decade earlier. Max and Vincent's relationship progresses and crescendos while at the same time we learn more about Vincent's history with Alex.

Set in London, Hong Kong, and Thailand, Disappoint Me will have you thinking about the story and characters long after you have finished reading. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This seems like a late entry into sad girl lit, as well as a Mad Libs of various identity dramas, all thrown together as a critique of "the whitest of white people bullshit" (line from the book). There's definitely a place for fiction about women who are floundering and dragging around their twenties and thirties, but after 10%, a premise didn't really emerge for me, at least not enough of one to care about the protagonist. A carousel of endless disappointing Tinder dates is reality, not sure it needs to be transcribed.

this is a complicated book about complicated characters, and my feelings about it are complicated too.
it asks a lot about forgiveness and happiness, what a good relationship and a good person and a good life is and are and can be.
it doesn't pretend to know the answers to any of them, which can be discomfiting. a lot about this book makes you think about things you may not want to, and realize things about yourself that can feel at odds with who we'd like to see ourselves as.
but as it offers the wonder of complexity to its cast, it offers it to its readers too. and that is a gift to read.

A novel that immediately has me chomping at the bit for any and everything Nicola Dinan publishes in the years to come, Disappoint Me is a witty and heartfelt addition to the “millennials meandering around European cities and thinking deep thoughts” subgenre populated by the likes of Sally Rooney, Elif Batuman, Zadie Smith, Natasha Brown, and Katie Kitamura.

Disappoint Me is one of those novels in which relatively little happens, and yet, simultaneously, everything happens. The first perspective in this well-crafted dual POV narrative is that of Max, a woman creeping into her early thirties who finds herself adrift and unsatisfied amidst a recent breakup and an ill-timed (and completely sober) tumble down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party. Max’s story finds her tentatively growing closer to Vincent, a man she met on a dating app who really does seem too good to be true. She navigates her relationships with her friends, her parents, her racial identity, and her particular experiences as a well-passing straight trans woman and how this positions her relative to both queer and heteronormative communities.

And on the other hand, Dinan also gives us Vincent's story, taking place over a decade earlier in Thailand during his pre-undergraduate gap year. Vincent’s story is woven in with Max’s contemporary experiences with him in ways that are very interesting and rarely heavy-handed, even as they force the reader to view their relationship from a completely different (and, occasionally, less benevolent) angle.

The novel is relatively brief, with prose that is both indulgent and succinct, and yet it manages to cram so many thoughts and perspectives and reflections into its chapters. At the novel’s core is the question of forgiveness—is it possible to forgive without forgetting? Can anyone ever really change? What does it mean to evolve as a person while still taking accountability for the things you have done? Dinan refuses to give the reader cut-and-dry answers to these questions, and yet Max and Vincent both reflect on them in such complex ways.

The character work here is so, SO good, with Dinan really allowing her characters to live real lives, lives that subvert literary convention and neat categorization. The dialog is fantastic as well, quippy and alive in ways that I could see translating very well to screen. This was such a joy to read, and a novel that I’m sure has a long and successful life ahead of it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Apparently, millennial angst is one of my favorite genres now. Say what you will about millennials, but like every generation, we’ve navigated unique and complicated shifts in how we understand sexuality, race, and romantic connection, and it's not always easy to explain to anyone who didn’t live through it. I appreciated the brutal honesty this book offered about the ghosts of our pasts: the mistakes we’ve made, the people we’ve hurt, and the ways we try or fail to hold ourselves accountable.

At its core, this book is about the times we don’t choose love. The moments we lack the courage to be vulnerable, to stay, to be better, and how those moments echo into our future relationships. It offers representation at the intersection of race, class, and queerness, showing how every relationship carries the weight of personal history, regret, and fear. History repeats itself, but cycles can be broken.

The writing style reminded me of Sally Rooney, introspective, emotionally raw, and quietly powerful. I wouldn’t call this a romance, but I would call it real. It focuses on regret, avoidance, and emotional accountability, diving into the parts of relationships we don’t often see in love stories. These characters do ugly things. Their connections are messy, painful, and sometimes disappointing, but that’s what makes them feel human.

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan surprised me. The open-ended resolution wasn’t exactly satisfying, but it felt true, and that honesty lingered long after the final page.

Nicola Dinan's Disappoint Me dives into the whole complicated thing between Max, a thirty-year-old trans woman, and Vincent, touching on love, betrayal, family drama, forgiveness, and finding acceptance. While the idea sounds really deep and relevant, for some readers, the book just doesn't quite hit the mark, ending up as a story that struggles to really connect.

One of the main spots where Disappoint Me might stumble is with its characters. Even though Max and Vincent's relationship is front and center, their individual quirks and how they interact can feel a bit underdeveloped. Max, as a trans character, could offer a super powerful way to look at identity and relationships, but her inner world and what drives her don't always come across as fully formed or consistently engaging. Vincent, too, often feels more like a way to move the plot along than a real person, which makes it tough to care much about the emotional stakes of their connection. The whole love and betrayal bit, while central, often feels like it's being told to you rather than shown, leaving you feeling pretty detached from what should be some serious emotional chaos.

The book's pacing can also be a bit of a bummer. At 320 pages, there's plenty of space for the story to unfold and dig into its heavy themes, but sometimes it just feels like it's wandering. Big emotional moments or conflicts, which should really push the story forward, might pop up and get resolved way too fast, or drag on without much happening. This uneven rhythm can make it hard to stay hooked, especially when the characters' inner struggles or relationship issues just don't have enough oomph to keep you interested.

Plus, even though the book tackles big themes like family trauma, forgiveness, and acceptance, how it handles them can sometimes feel a bit shallow or preachy. The story might touch on these complex topics without really digging into what they mean or letting the characters truly wrestle with their weight. This can lead to a reading experience where the deep potential of the subject matter is acknowledged but never fully explored, leaving you wishing for a more nuanced and impactful look at what it means to be human.

So, to wrap it up, Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan, despite its promising ideas and modern feel, might just disappoint readers who are looking for a truly engaging character study or a powerfully executed dive into its serious subjects. Its characters feeling a bit flat, the inconsistent pacing, and the sometimes superficial way it handles complex themes can all chip away at its overall impact, leaving you with a sense of missed opportunity.

I was thrilled to receive an eARC of Disappoint Me after loving Nicola Dinan's debut novel, Bellies, and this sophomore novel is a sensational example of queer literary fiction. Five stars!

Max is a trans woman in her 30s, reassessing her fit in the artistic queer London of her 20s. She is a poet with a published collection of her writing, but Max spends her days working as a lawyer for a start up that falsely claims their AI can perform the legal work Max does anonymously. Moving away from the toxic artists of her 20s, she starts dating a cis, straight man, Vincent, who, like her, is Chinese. As their relationship develops and Max finds herself more and more enmeshed in the cis/heteronormative environment of his straight 30-something friends, she is forced to confront questions about parenthood, health, sexuality and gender, family obligations, and her complicated relationship with her mixed-race Chinese heritage. Alongside her deepening relationship with Vincent is a deep exploration of Max's relationships with her family and her lifelong best friend, Simone, as the two women prepare to be bridesmaids for a childhood friend's wedding—again, confronting expectations of womanhood and friendship as they age into adulthood.

The narrative alternates between Max's perspective in the present day and Vincent's perspective of a fateful time in Thailand during a gap year trip 11 years earlier. As pieces of Vincent's background are slowly revealed, we get a more complicated view of a man who seems today very caring and upright. This book wrestles with big questions about forgiveness, whether people can change, and how to navigate those changes as we age alongside or apart from people in our lives. Max's transness is an integral part of who she is, but it is never interrogated or questioned, and so much of her journey is universal to womanhood.

Disappoint Me is a terrific new novel I would recommend for anyone who is looking for rich, literary writing or queer and trans stories for our times. Thank you to The Dial Press and NetGalley for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

For New Year’s Eve, Max celebrates by falling down the stairs at a party. It’s less exciting than it sounds. After Max broke up with her ex several months ago, Max’s best friend convinces her to try dating again. On an app, Max meets Vincent, a Chinese lawyer, much like herself, though he works in a law firm and she trains an AI to read legalese. The two of them hit it off and soon one date turns into two, three, and eventually Vincent moves in with her.

During all of this time, Max’s friend, Emily, is preparing to be married. It leads Max to thoughts of her own future. Does she want to marry? Does she want kids? As a transwoman, children require more steps, but are still possible. But does she even want one? And does she want one with Vincent?

Vincent seems perfect. Her parents like him, Max likes him. He makes mistakes — asking improper questions, occasionally making comments, but is quick to apologize when Max confronts him. He loves Max, but does he love her as a woman or a transwoman? Does he really love all of her, or just the parts of her that are neat, tidy, and acceptable?

When Vincent’s past comes to light, Max has to make a choice. Can she forgive Vincent for what he did ten years ago? Is saying he’s sorry enough? Do people really grow past their mistakes, or are these things which will stay with them forever?

This is one of those books that is more about the thoughts of the character than the life they’re living, but Max’s life is actually one of the interesting parts, for me. Max is a transwoman, and she will not let Vincent forget that. His absent comment — that he sometimes finds it hard to believe she’s trans— is met with a firm slap down. That’s not a compliment to her, any more than than saying it’s sometimes hard to believe she’s Chinese.

Vincent never makes the comments out of cruelty, just ignorance, and he tries to grow from them, but why is it on her to correct him? Why isn’t it on him to do better, to be better in the first place? But Vincent is human, and so is Max. They both make mistakes; she is, after all, his first trans girlfriend. And she loves him.

However, as we learn in Vincent’s POV chapters, interspersed with Max’s, she is not, in fact, his first transgender girlfriend. When he was 19 and traveling on his gap year, Vincent spent time in Thailand and met Alex, who was there for her surgery. At 19, Vincent didn’t know much of the world, and struggled with the idea of his sexuality on learning Alex was trans. Did being with her make him gay? Make him queer? Does being with Max make him queer? His relationships with both transwomen paint a less than flattering picture of Vincent, and how he handles his secrets being revealed, how he carries himself, and how he speaks to Max paint a decided picture of who he is, and who he wants to be. It’s a challenging moment, both for the character and the reader.

This is one of those books where I have so many quotes highlighted, nearly a dozen. However, I’m going to be honest. I really struggled with the first half or so of this book. The writing is good, Max is an excellent character — flawed, judgmental, sour, introspective, and sharp enough to cut herself — but I struggled to stay invested in the story. There’s a lot of introspection that can feel a bit navel-gazy, some circular moments that spiral in a galaxy of lovely words and yet end up exactly where they began. However, around the 50-60% mark, the pace picks up. Even so, this isn’t the book for me — through no fault of the book. Much like some books feel like they were meant for you, some books are very clearly written for someone else. I really hope this book finds its audience.

Overall, I liked it. However, it was kind of boring at times. I really didn't connect with the characters at all and even found some of them incredibly unlikeable. The ending also felt a bit rushed but I did find this to be entertaining and worth a read.

"This is also the world where people, often women, are doomed to spend much of their lives forgiving the errors of others and suffering for the sake of other people's growth."

With minimal plot and heavily character driven, I found the first 30% of the book to be a little slow and hard to get into. Once the pace started to pick up, I was so deep into this story. I can't explain how much I enjoyed the writing style, especially the blunt, dry humor. All the characters felt so real, and complex, as if I was just a bystander watching someone else's life happening before me. Which made finishing the book bittersweet, as I didn't want to say bye to Max and Vincent just yet.
There are so many quotes in this book that are so relatable, I'm really tempted to get a physical copy just to annotate all of them. After reading Disappoint Me, Nicola Dinan's debut novel, Bellies, is going on my tbr right away.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/The Dial Press for the ARC of this ebook!

I've yet to read Bellies (will be doing next as I loved Disappoint Me,) but I already know that I love the way that Nicola Dinan writes. I thought that this was a beautiful book, and I loved every minute of it. I especially loved the ending--after spending so much time with Max, I thought it was the perfect way to leave this story. If you're thinking of reading Disappoint Me, you definitely should.

This book is the epitome of normal people going through it. It is pessimistic, features unlikeable characters, and I couldn't love it more.

The main character was written with such a dry sense of humour. One second she could be talking about a tragic experience, and the next she would be making a relatable joke about that same experience. She was unlikeable. She wasn't that nice. She just felt... normal. Like an everyday person you would find walking down the street. I loved the main character, especially by the end, since she comes to terms with her life and her life decisions, and all the little moments that she's experienced that make her who she is today. She is extremely reflective and self aware, without sounding egotistical or snobby.

I adored the writing style. Each character was written with subtle nuances and changes in writing style, that are not very noticeable when first reading, but make sense the more you read the switches in character pov.

This literary fiction is self aware, pessimistic, realistic, flawed, and truly human. I recommend this to readers who want to read about slightly traumatized people who are just trying to survive and live a normal life.

A huge thank you to Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I had a hard time getting into this. I don't think I was the target reader. Perhaps I will give the author another try if the synopsis was interesting.

Told in alternating perspectives, this novel explores the new, but intense relationship between Max, a thirty-year-old trans woman and poet, and Vincent, a lawyer and the son of Chinese immigrants. In the present timeline, we see Max and Vincent’s relationship develop quickly despite missteps, uncomfortable encounters, and uncertain family members. In the past timeline, we see Vincent during a gap year in Thailand–confused, insecure, and even cruel. As Vincent’s past mistakes bleed into the relationship these two are attempting to build, Dinan provides a deeply realized depiction of disappointment, the way it feels, the shame it uncovers, and the questions it inspires about how to forgive and what it is that makes us who we are. This heartfelt and emotional story is ideal for fans of Brandon Taylor and Torrey Peters.

Max is a thirty year old trans woman who has struggled her entire life to feel like she fits in anywhere. She's the lawyer for an AI firm that pretends to be powering AI to read and review contracts, and her passion is really her poetry writing. Her life is a mess, having been recently broken up with and feeling a little lost, and it's just pushed over the edge when she falls down a flight of stairs at a New Years Eve Party. She decides to get out there again and date when she meets Vincent, a man who may be exactly what she's looking for. He's kind and caring and gives her more reassurance and praise than her long-term ex, Arthur, ever did.

While this book's prose is incredibly well-written and the representation of the trans community in this book is SO important, I just generally didn't enjoy it unfortunately. I almost DNF'd this one multiple times in the first 49%, but it did get better for the second half of the book. I never really understood where we were going the entire first part. I do think it was interesting to read both her life in present tense compared to Vincent's past to better understand how and why he is the way he is.

Unfortunately, the rough first half of the book just really soured the rest for me. I was also a little disappointed with how the book ended. I was hoping for a bit more closure to the story. There were also quite a few times when I'd be reading and mid-sentence just space off which is VERY atypical for me. Sadly, I wouldn't recommend this to others.

Thank you to Random House for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4.5 stars

This book is beautifully ruthless in its demand for deep, nuanced thought. It requires the reader to contemplate potentially uncomfortable but universal experiences with honesty. It's hard to say I enjoyed it -- that doesn't fully encompass my experience.

It's better to say that this story changed me.

As a nonbinary person, I understood some of Max's concerns and could commiserate. Those moments were especially poignant. But there's a universality to Max's experience, too. While Max's trans identity is inherent to who she is, she also struggles with all the challenges women experience in society today. The two cannot be separated.

This book covers so much ground: from childhood trauma to forgiveness to cultural expectations to whether people can change. I particularly loved seeing how Max and Vincent's Chinese heritage and culture shaped their lives in different ways.

This story will stay with me for a long time.

<i>Many thanks to NetGalley, The Dial Press, and the author for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.</i>