Disappoint Me

by Dinan, Nicola | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Published 23/01/2025 by Transworld Publishers Ltd (Doubleday) in the United Kingdom
Hardback | 288 pages
223 x 145 x 25mm | 390g

The brand-new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Bellies, a funny and poignant exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bougie domesticity.

Chosen as a ‘Best Book of 2025’ by Cosmopolitan, Stylist, Elle, Dazed, Vogue, Other, and GQ

'One of the UK’s most perceptive young novelists with her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary behaviour' Guardian'

Riveting, funny and devastating' Shon Faye, bestselling author of The Transgender Issue

Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. She’s living her best life! Or is she?The debris of years of dysphoria and failed relationships rattle around in her head. When she tumbles down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party and wakes up in hospital alone, she decides to make some changes.

First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Enter Vincent, corporate lawyer and hobby baker. His trad friendship group may as well speak a different language to Max, and his Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. It’s uncertain terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she’d long given up on as a foolish fantasy.

Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage. On his gap year in Thailand a decade prior, he vies for the attention of a gorgeous traveller, Alex, with secrets of her own. Is Vincent really the new face of the Enlightened Man, or will the ghosts of his past sabotage his and Max’s happiness?

Funny, moving, and poignant, Disappoint Me reckons with the pressures of living the 'right' kind of life and making peace with the past.

Praise for Disappoint Me:

‘An absolute gift…I loved it’ Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends

‘Nicola Dinan writes like some kind of demigod’ Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

‘A riveting, hilarious and totally devastating love story… will have you gripped and sets Dinan as a literary voice to watch’ Elle, ‘Best Books of 2025

’‘Pacy, perfectly pitched and emotionally honest: I loved every page’ Stylist,