Disappoint Me Nicola Dinan – Bookread2day

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

Hardback published by Doubleday 23rd January 2025

Pages 288

SBN 9781529930622

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?

MY REVIEW

After reading Bellies, Nicola Dinan’s debut, I knew I had to read Disappoint Me. 30 year old, Max, living in Hackney, is a bit Chinese, raised in Hong Kong, is a lawyer, with working four days a week as a legal counsel for a tech company, and has a flare for writing poetry. Max is at a party where some are doing drugs and drinking alcohol. Through a jealous rage missing a step, max falls down some stairs, Max wakes up in a hospital. I couldn’t believe Max took the IV drip out, of his hand, got dressed to walk home, drifting in and out of consciousness. This is the story of Max a published poet and meeting Vincent. With the theme of a trans woman, and characters carrying their own baggage, this story doesn’t disappoint.

About author Nicola Dinan

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, was long listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and the Polari First Book Prize and the Diverse Book Awards and short listed for the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Disappoint Me is her second novel that’s out now. https://www.instagram.com/nicoladinan