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

Transphobia, assault, mention of abortion.

You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can’t deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn’t these be the best years of her life? Why doesn’t it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships—familial and romantic—that make us who we are.

Don't just take our word for it...

“Nicola Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other.”
– Torrey Peters, author of Detransition Baby

“The up-and-coming trans author of Bellies returns with Disappoint Me, where Max, a poet and tech worker, decides to switch up her life by pivoting to heteronormativity. She finds good company in Vincent, a lawyer, who has baggage of his own; a whirlwind and explosive trip to Thailand and a mother who isn’t sure about her son dating a transgender woman.”
– Our Culture

“This book promises an engaging and insightful look at relationships, exploring the kind of growing up you do when you are already an adult.”
– them, “Staff Picks: Our 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2025”

Taste the very first page

It’s four a.m. and the house party hasn’t thinned. New Year’s! Everyone wants to go to a party, but nobody wants to host a party, and so a party’s a party and people will stay. At a certain stage of life, people leave house shares for smaller flats, because they can afford to live alone, or because they’re in a couple, or because their parents give them some money for a modest two-bed, though they’ll assure you they pay the mortgage themselves. In all cases, houses become less like places you live and more like homes, less like places you’re willing to trash. House parties are rare. Caspar, who lives here, is a friend from university. We were also in a writing workshop with my ex-boyfriend, Arthur, though I’ve obviously since left. Now I barely see Caspar outside of these parties, which he continues to invite me to despite our estrangement.

I’m flirting with sobriety, which means I’ve only had two drinks and the small bump of ket that Caspar just offered me. The decision to restrict is not because I’m an alcoholic or addict. I’ve always been able to pull back, to eventually say no, to go home early. I’m restrict- ing because drugs and alcohol make me feel bad. After Arthur broke…

June 2025