Nicola's voice is singular - so funny and wise and probing. This book is about love, forgiveness, friendship, queerness, transness, and mortality, but it doesn't feel nearly as heavy as all that.

So, so lucky to have been asked to read a DRC of this - a favorite of the year! Gorgeously written, funny, achingly relatable. Can't stop thinking about or recommending Disappoint Me. I'm grasping at the words for a full review but wanted to give it its NetGalley flowers before it's too late!

Overall, I found the book to be a compelling and enjoyable read.
The main character, a transgender woman, resonated with me as a cisgender woman. Her experiences reflect a broader reality: how men often act in their own self-interest, using and ultimately disappointing the women in their lives. Vincent, her partner, is a clear example—his actions are consistently selfish, and he rarely considers perspectives outside of his own.

This didn't grip me nor hold my attention. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for a review.

With such a gorgeous cover, I was excited to jump into this. Good things to know before you start - this is definitely literary fiction. It won't be a tension filled plot or a huge rise to a big reveal. It's just a moment in lives that are messy.

We have Max - living life, wondering if she wants that whole traditional boyfriend/relationship that seems like all her friends are starting to jump in to. She's 30 now, does that mean she needs to decide soon?

And we have Vincent. We get before times of Vincent, as he meets up with his friend Fred on a gap year. And we get the now Vincent, cool and calm and very interested in Max.

This was a heavy read, for me, but very realistic. My heart broke, in parts, as Max struggled to find her own answers and juggle demanding respect while also remaining safe. The second story was equally heartbreaking and hard to read it parts. This story was tough but had some really tender, lovely moments.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

This is some Of the best character work I’ve read in a while, Dinan does a remarkable job of making these people feel very real in the relatively short length of this book. Tackles a wide variety of experiences with remarkable tact and even made me laugh out loud with some very funny observations….particularly about the wedding! “Nobody is just one thing” will stick with me for a while.

Disappoint Me begins with Max, our main character, falling down the stairs at a New Years party and hitting her head, waking up in the hospital with a vow to change things about her life. She meets Vincent and they begin a relationship, and intermingled with Max's story is the story of a few weeks that Vincent spent in Thailand on his gap year, where we learn more about him.
The writing on this book was excellent - Nicola Dinan has a way of peeling back the layers of human existence until everything is exposed. This book, which centers on being transgender, grief, and health, and generally other things that are not experiences I share, still manages to be wholly relatable. Some of the lines about failure felt like a gut punch (in a good way?) because of how accurate they were and how well they captured the feeling. This whole book captures human emotion and experience so well. All of the characters were raw and honest and flawed, which made them such interesting characters to read about. This book had me on the edge of my seat, even though I wouldn't refer to it as having a gripping plot, and it made me feel the emotions along with our characters. I definitely recommend this one, and will be picking up Dinan's other novel and any future work as well!

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan is sharp, emotionally layered, and brimming with insight about love, gender, and identity. At its heart is a complicated relationship between two people—one of whom is transitioning—and how the evolution of the self can ripple outward, reshaping intimacy, connection, and even memory.

The prose is fresh and observant, with a kind of emotional honesty that feels both tender and cutting. Dinan doesn’t flinch from the messiness of transformation—how it’s not just about the individual, but also about the people who orbit them. It’s about figuring out who you are, while realizing the person you love might be doing the same.

There’s grief here, and longing, but also humor and a kind of bruised hope. If you’re drawn to character-driven stories that explore the intersections of love, identity, and change—with all the nuance that deserves—Disappoint Me is deeply affecting. Quietly powerful and beautifully real.

4.5

I ended up really loving this one. Such a unique and witty voice and engaging writing style. I think a lot of literature focusing on trans characters is often a drama or a tragedy, based on the fact that so much of the trans experience can be traumatic. I feel that this novel focuses on the day to day experiences of a trans person just trying to live life, navigating relationships with friends, dating, health, and changing identities over time. I loved the dual POV with the flash back and flash forward timeline, it created such interesting insight into the peak of conflict in the story. I love a novel that takes me somewhere I have never been before, and this certainly fulfilled that for me.

Thank you to Dial press and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review

Disappoint Me was an effective tool in teaching all of us how we might lead the same lives, just in different colors. Great conversations and lessons learned by all the characters, loved their growth and really appreciated the time jumps in order to give us the perspective of both Max and Vincent.

I was hooked from the beginning!!
It was amazing and engaging.
I was instantly sucked in by the atmosphere and writing style.
The characters were all very well developed .
The writing is exceptional and I was hooked after the first sentence.

I really liked this one overall — it had a kind of raw, emotional depth that made the characters feel very real. They’re messy, flawed, and complicated in ways that felt believable and human, which made it easy to care about what happened to them. The writing was thoughtful and reflective without being too heavy, and there were some great moments that really stuck with me. That said, the pacing felt a little off at times, especially toward the end, and a few parts didn’t land quite as strongly as others. Still, it’s a smart, emotionally honest read that left an impression.

One thing this book did not do is disappoint.

Nicola Dinan writes characters that are so emotionally charged, complex and vividly portrayed. Her writing is crisp, eloquent and extremely conversational. The dialogue between the characters feels so real that it’s like you’re in the room with them, experiencing the events as they unfold. This is something I absolutely love in a character-driven novel.

The dual point-of-view and timeline are ingeniously executed. When the past inevitably collides with the present, the transition is devastatingly seamless and so well-crafted.

Dinan explores a wide range of themes—transness, love, femininity, transphobia, betrayal, alcoholism, family, identity, morality, forgiveness—all of which are handled cleverly and with tact. She is truly masterful with her words. For the second time, the last 15% of her novel moved me to tears, solidifying her status as an auto-read author for me.

4 ⭐️. what a lovely lovely story about queer and trans relationships. Max is vastly complicated and while it was difficult to infiltrate her mind, I really really enjoyed my time with her.

ty to The Dial Press, Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

“A person is no fewer than two things.” That is the line that will stick with me from Nicola Dinan’s new book, though there were a number of equally “wait let me stop and read that again” bits in this captivating second novel by the author of Bellies.

I want to hug every character in this book. Max, a trans woman whose experience of womanhood feels so universal and yet achingly specific to Max herself, is a main character I’ll never forget. Her boyfriend, her family, her friends- they are all incredibly well-developed supporting characters I could have read entire books about.

This book has a fairly simple plot, which is not a criticism at all. It’s just a soft series of events and recollections that work to highlight the understanding that Max starts to come to by the end of the novel: “sometimes there’s nothing to do but leave, and sometimes there’s nothing to do but forgive.” Everyone in Max’s life has disappointed her in some way, but do people’s wrongs define them? Should you cut someone off because they’ve wronged you? Does something that happened 10 years ago have any real bearing on the present? The last pages of this book are filled with so many questions and the lack of answers is strangely comforting.

This book is so messy, emotional, darkly funny- the author comparison that comes to mind is Sally Rooney if Rooney wrote more diverse characters and wasn’t so averse ro traditional punctuation and structure. The richness and depth of each romantic, familial, and platonic relationship in this book is truly impressive. Nicola Dinan has cemented her spot in the literary sad girl canon with this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for the opportunity to be an early reader of this title, which is out now!

Disappoint me tells the story of Max, a trans woman, as she falls for a CIS lawyer and grapples with how his family will take the news of her being trans. Throughout this story, we get present day and flashback povs to help us learn more about Max and Vincent. This story is both a love story, tragedy, and a slice of life story. I really enjoyed the way the author handled the discussion about identity and dating, and how the healthcare system affects trans people. I think fans of Salley Rooney, Aria Aber, and Julie Armfield will enjoy this story.

I recently became a fan of dual timelines, sometimes they can become convoluted and messy but this was done so well and I found myself invested in both stories being told. I’m not going to go into much detail about the plot, bc you can read the summary, but more of my feelings about the book.

Throughout the novel there is this ethical murkiness. We question, what does forgiveness look like when someone’s past collides with your future? Who even has the right to forgive? And is love this act of atonement?? What does it mean to be with someone you care for and understand that they have lived a life before you, and that life isn’t spotless.

The story just felt deeply human. It’s about the slow unraveling of trust. The discomfort of loving someone who did things you wouldn’t. The helplessness of wondering whether staying with them means excusing it all. The heartbreak of realizing that maybe the person you’ve built a future with is still chasing redemption from someone else’s pain.

I appreciated the moral complexity here. Most, if not all characters display some sort of shade of grey. And while I had mixed feelings about how Max ultimately handles her decision, that ambiguity works. Not everything is tied up cleanly, and that felt honest.

This isn’t a story about perfect people making perfect choices. It’s a story about the choices that haunt us, and whether we can or should outgrow them.

Overall this book kept me thoroughly entertained. I felt like I was watching an episode of Girls x White Lotus and I just needed to know what would happen next. This was my first Nicola Dinan, which has me so excited to go through her backlog!

LOVE LOVE LOVEDDD THIS BOOK! This read was something I particularly wouldn't read but something was telling me to give it a shot and I'm so glad I did! I am a big fan of books with dual pov and this beautifully written story had me in a chokehold from start to finish. I liked getting to see both perspectives of max and vincent and the way the author put this story together was such a masterpiece.

“Identities don’t mean much to me outside of their relationship with the material, and if I’m not performing queerness, if what I’m perceived to be is just a woman, and one who isn’t trans or gay, then where does identity really take me? What cause does it serve?”

i think this is the first book i read with a trans woman and it will definitely not be the last. i’m trying to expand the different stories in my tbr. the great kind of representation that doesn’t feel forced but just part of the every day experiences in life, not overly dramatic but just natural to the point you can find it boring.

not the story, the story is great and i think it speaks about very common topics in trans people, and i think we all should be more open to learn more about these topics, to be able to understand and be more empathic as humans begins at how other people experience life.

this is a story of max and vincent. max is a trans woman that recently started a new relationship with vincent. we have two pov’s and the one from vincent is set around 10 years ago when something happened while he was traveling with his best friend. this story explores the different aspects of entering a new relationship when you come with a very specific baggage, it could be your family expectations, your weird friends, your career choices and most importantly your journey to self identity.

i really enjoyed this one, thank you netgalley and the dial press for the advance copy in exchange of an honest review. this book came out this tuesday so you can already go check it out.

rating: 4 stars.

Since I'm late on this ARC, I got my hands on the audiobook, and I have been listening to it on and off since yesterday. I really tried my hardest to finish this, but it was going in one ear and out the other, and I couldn't continue like that. While I can recognize the value of the story, I wasn't connecting on an emotional level at all. That might be 100% a me problem, but I also think the prose isn't my taste, so it was harder to be fully engaged.

However, what I listened to up to the 57% mark felt like an honest exploration of the trans experience and modern relationships, specifically relationships between men and trans women, which I very much appreciate, and it also delved into family trauma and themes of forgiveness. It can be a little slow, but I think readers who like to sit with characters as they go about their lives will enjoy this, so I do recommend it; it just didn't make enough of an impression on me.