Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

Bellies was one of my favourite reads of 2023, and I always think a second novel on the heels of an excellent debut must be one of the scariest things to write! But Nicola Dinan has risen to the challenge, cementing her in my eyes as one of the most exciting authors writing today.

Disappoint Me follows Max and Vincent as they navigate turning 30 and all of the expectations that come with it. Vincent is also grappling with the past, something terrible he did that he’s managed to keep secret. This is probably one of my favourite things about this book, the nuance with which Vincent’s bad thing is written. Because it is bad. Very bad. But people aren’t (generally) all bad or all good, they occupy a space in between and Dinan writes that space so beautifully.

As I’m writing this, I actually think Vincent overshadowed Max in terms of character development, but I still loved her. Max often gets sort of dimmed by the people in her life; she seems more defined by her relationship to Vincent, her brother, and her best friend (who is awful lol). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as these relationships are so exquisitely written. But Max as a whole entity, undefined by those around her, remains a little out of reach.

But overall, gorgeous, stunning, already eagerly awaiting book 3!

told in dual perspectives and timelines, disappoint me follows max and vincent, two 30-something-year-olds who meet on a dating app and begin a relationship. exploring transness, complex relationships, how our lives and experiences shape us, and forgiveness, dinan's creates deeply empathetic and flawed characters. there is so much wonderful growth and setback and very real feelings of trying to make sense of who you are and your place in the world. max and vincent's anxieties going into the relationship and during the relationship were well-written and realistic, and i liked seeing them both come together and fight to understand each other over the course of their relationship.

i cannot write a review for nicola dinan without mentioning her stunning prose; i would read anything she writes at this point. i loved her inclusion of mundane details, something i also loved about her debut novel, bellies, and how much it adds to the characterization and making her protagonists feel real and whole.

the ending left me with more questions than answers, but it felt true to life and deeply cathartic.

a quiet, beautifully-written and thought-provoking novel, that is more than worth the read.

Many, many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC!

4.5

At least Disappoint Me didn't make me cry. It was, however, just as beautifully written as Bellies.

Disappoint Me tells us the story of Max, a trans woman and her boyfriend, Vincent - a man with secrets.

The dual timeline follows Max and Vincent's relationship but also Vincent's past during his gap year.

It is a simple story but it is beautifully told and the richness of the storytelling sets it above other novels.

This is a very different novel to Bellies exploring, as it does, relationships between families, romantic ones between men and trans women, forgiveness and acceptance, understanding that we all make mistakes and being able to admit our faults.

I loved Bellies and I loved Disappoint Me. I look forward to Nicola Dinan's next novel.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the advance review copy.

This was an absolutely beautiful, brilliant and poetic book. I love Dinan‘s writing style which brought me both to laughter and to tears and the novel‘s characters are some of the most real, touching and raw. A touching and magnificent exploration of love, identity, friendship and family. I can‘t really say much more other than you must read this book.

I really liked this moving, emotional book. I have owned the author’s debut for about a year now without reading it, but it has definitely moved up my list of books to read. She has a really easy to read, flowing way of writing that I absolutely devoured. The story is touching and the characters are so well developed, they felt very real. This was a great read.

This novel was excellent! 'Bellies' was a fantastic debut and Nicola's second book is even better. Max, a transwoman, falls for Vincent after a painful break-up and is stuck in a rut - a wannabe poet who has lost enthusiasm and in a job pretending to be A.I. Max discovers her the cause of her headaches is actually a brain tumour and a much needed break away unleashes secrets that question who Vincent really is. Max is left reeling from the revelation and trying to deal with her upcoming operation. What will Max decide to do?

I thoroughly enjoyed this, it touched on different topics - trans issues, life issues, trust and betrayal.

Many thanks to #netgalley and #Randomhouse for this ARC.

I enjoyed this book and it has made me think about the own choices I choose to do

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read arc of this book in exchange for this review

Vincent was the standout character for me in this book, although Max is equally well written there is just something about Vincent!
This is an interesting exploration of a developing romance between two people heading through their thirties and with hurdles that other couples may not face. There are some real soul searching moments and some gentle revelations about life for Max and being accepted for who she is by people who are important to those who are important to her.

yes to romance novels about trans characters! yes to complex romantic relationships that aren’t a straightforward predictable fairytale! yes to questions of accountability and forgiveness!
this was SO interesting and nuanced and just really really refreshing for a romance book and I want so many more books like this! even if it’s not perfect it’s such a good step in overhauling the romance genre and I’m such a fan because relationships are COMPLICATED and MESSY and not everything has a perfect explanation or ends well and that is exactly the stuff I want to read about!

I've been a huge fan of Dinan since Bellies, a book I devoured and adored. I'm glad to say that Disappoint Me is in every way as hilarious and heart-breaking as the debut, but even more brave.

Dinan's words and observations are razor sharp and capture the trans experience, and the rawness of humanity, so perfectly. Disappoint Me is a book that is genuinely hilarious and then immediately rips out your heart on the next page.

Already a strong contender for the best book of the year.

Dinan's début novel Bellies was so good—and such a surprise—when I read it back in September that I was really delighted to be sent a proof of her second. One of the things I liked about Bellies was how it deals with a part of young life that doesn't get a lot of coverage in fiction, namely those odd years after you've left university but don't feel like you're properly fledged yet and are trying to navigate a lot of sudden changes to your relationships/friendships with other people. Disappoint Me is set amongst people in their early thirties, some of whom have had some artistic success, but there's that same sense of not quite being convinced by your own adultness and yet also being aware that you do now have to act like an adult. (Well, apart from the fact that all these folks take a lot of drugs, which I can't identify with and have never been interested in.) Max, the protagonist of Disappoint Me, does feel a little bit like an aged-up Ming from Bellies—their wryness, their humour, their fears, are very similar—but Vincent, Max's boyfriend, felt like a really original creation to me. So much in this about having juuuust enough history, and enough perspective on your own youthful behaviour, to be ashamed by, and about trying to do better without exculpating your earlier mistakes. I wonder, also, if Hanya Yanagihara is a conscious influence; Dinan uses melodrama with similar panache. Anyway, a lot of people are going to feel seen by this and it's very good.

I adored Nicola Dinan's debut Bellies so was thrilled to have the opportunity to read Disappoint Me. And it did not... disappoint... me. Sorry but sometimes I simply must pick the low hanging fruit!

Max is trans, a lapsed poet and working as a lawyer at a tech company. On New Year's Eve she falls down the stairs at a house party and upon waking up in hospital decides to make some changes to her life.

Vincent is a practicing lawyer and meets Max on a dating app. On his gap year in Thailand with his best friend he had a fling with a woman named Alex, which reverberates through his life.

This is so complex and beautifully done. It is set across two timelines and they weave together beautifully. The characters are raw and real, especially Max who remains downright humorous in the face of everything in her life.

Loved it. Love Nicola Dinan!

A funny and interesting look at contemporary dating in queer life.

Likely going to be the subject of my January newsletter to coincide with the release.

Thank you to the publishers for my ARC copy!

I absolutely loved Dinan’s previous novel, Bellies, and was so excited to read Disappoint Me! And I wasn’t disappointed! No pun intended. Dinan has such a gorgeous way of writing and storytelling, and similarly to Bellies I found myself completely captivated and obsessed with the emotional and heartfelt story.

Nicola Dinan might just be one of my favourite new authors. The heroes of her stories are interesting, flawed and unmistakably alive, and once the book is over I'm always so sad I need to part with them. Disappoint Me raises some really interesting questions about intersections of different aspects of identity, as well as about love and forgiveness, and the more I think about the questions poised in the book the more I realise how good it was.

I enjoyed the dual narrative; it really helped me connect to the story seeing the mindsets of Max and Vincent. Nicola Dinan did a beautiful job of addressing modern relationships, identity, and forgiveness. Max was so complex, I felt that I was there, seeing everything she had to overcome. This is well written but quite forgettable, which is really a personal opinion because I've read a lot of books with this similar plot that have affected me more deeply. This book is just not one I would read again. I was received this ARC in exchange for a honest review.

Oh I love Nicola Dinan.
I was absolutely thrilled to get an advanced copy of this after loving her previous book, Bellies.
Disappoint me takes place across two narratives. One belongs to Max in current day, a trans woman working in tech who falls down the stairs on New Year’s Eve.
The other takes us back to her boyfriend, Vincent, years previous on his gap year.
I love a dual narrative and loved the approach here. I think the combination of narratives were a perfect juxtaposition. I particularly loved Vincent’s narrative and Max’s brother Jamie’s story.
A fantastic book about love, expectation, forgiveness and trust.

4 stars

Disappoint Me is a novel about relationships and growing up, as a thirty year old trans woman meets a new guy and navigates a more heteronormative life. Max works as a lawyer for a tech company, doing what their AI tool actually can't, and after a New Year's party ends with her falling down some stairs, she's looking for more stability. She meets Vincent, a corporate lawyer who is sweet and caring, even if a lot of his life feels unlike Max's. Looming is Max's friend's wedding, in which she's a bridesmaid, but a health scare and a secret from Vincent's past push that to the background, and Max must face up to what her future might actually hold.

Having loved Bellies, I was excited to read Dinan's next book, and Disappoint Me has a lot of similarities, focusing on characters' emotions and relationships, and navigating acting in ways that are or aren't see as 'normal'. In her second novel, Dinan focuses on ideas of where to go next, what happens after. The protagonist, Max, is thirty and watches as people suddenly start focusing on weddings and babies, or being obsessed with their jobs as an alternative. The book considers what kind of future there might be, especially for a heterosexual trans woman whose job doesn't challenge her and whose future as a poet didn't seem to go anywhere. There's a sense of trying out a heteronormative life, with some hilarious touches like that her boyfriend Vincent loves bringing up that he's read Detransition, Baby whenever talk turns to parenting, and this novel in general does feel like it follows on not only from Dinan's debut but other talked-about trans literary fiction like Detransition, Baby, exploring a world in which cis straight people have also read these novels.

Given the title, I did start fearing partway through that Disappoint Me's ending was going to be too bleak, but actually it is more ambivalent and purposefully ambiguous, showing the difficulty in seeing anything as an ending when the world always keeps going regardless. There's a lot of things that are thrown up in the novel and don't really get resolved, but again, as the book is trying to capture the fact that life keeps going on, and what that means when you're trying to work out your own life, this feels purposeful. The characters are messy, but as the ending tries to highlight, people aren't perfect and you can still love people when they mess up, and part of getting older is realising this.

I enjoyed Bellies last year so I was thrilled to get to read an advanced copy of ‘Disappoint Me’.
The novel follows Max, a 30-year-old poet who, after an accident, rethinks her life and starts a relationship with Vincent, a corporate lawyer.

This is a modern take on relationships, identity, and their complexities, it’s perfect for those who enjoy character-driven stories especially those with LGBTQ+ themes.

Disappoint Me by Nicola Morrison is a thought-provoking and refreshingly modern take on relationships, identity, and the messy business of navigating personal change. At the heart of the novel is Max, a 30-year-old poet and legal counsel who seems to be living the high life. But beneath the surface, she’s grappling with years of dysphoria and failed relationships. When a tumble down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party lands her in hospital, Max decides it’s time to re-evaluate her life, starting with an unexpected plunge into heteronormativity.

Enter Vincent, a corporate lawyer with a penchant for baking, who comes from a traditional Chinese family. His friends speak a social language foreign to Max, and his parents never imagined their son dating a trans woman. Despite the uncertainty, Vincent cares for Max in ways she thought were long-lost fantasies. Yet, Vincent is carrying his emotional baggage. A decade ago, during his gap year in Thailand, he became entangled with a fellow traveller, Alex, whose secrets have lingered in his life ever since. The question is: can Vincent be the evolved, "enlightened" man Max needs, or will the unresolved ghosts of his past disrupt their chance at happiness?

One of the most compelling themes in Disappoint Me is forgiveness. Morrison skilfully explores the complex questions: How do you know if someone deserves forgiveness? Do people change? These philosophical reflections are woven seamlessly into the characters' relatable, everyday lives, making the novel both introspective and accessible.

While some of the side stories and subplots aren’t as fully developed as readers might hope, this lack of resolution feels intentional, echoing the ambiguity of real life. The side plots add pace and intrigue, contributing to the overall arc without detracting from the main story. Ultimately, Disappoint Me offers a rich, fast-paced narrative with relatable characters and a strong emotional core, leaving readers contemplating the complexities of forgiveness, identity, and love.

An engaging and thought-provoking read, this novel comes highly recommended for anyone interested in a nuanced exploration of relationships and personal growth.