Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

A Raw, Unflinching Portrait of Love and Forgiveness

Genre:
This is a novel that will likely generate discussion and debate—about forgiveness, about trans rights, about the nature of redemption itself. It's a challenging, beautifully written exploration of love's moral complexities that will stay with readers long after the final page.
  • Publisher: The Dial Press
  • Genre: Romance, LGBTQ
  • First Publication: 2025
  • Language: English

Following her acclaimed debut Bellies, which won the Polari First Book Prize and garnered multiple award nominations, Nicola Dinan returns with Disappoint Me, a novel that refuses to offer easy answers or comfortable resolutions. Where Bellies explored the tender complexities of transition within a relationship, Disappoint Me ventures into even thornier territory: the messy intersection of love, moral compromise, and the weight of past mistakes.

Set against the backdrop of millennial London, Dinan’s sophomore effort follows Max, a thirty-year-old trans woman grappling with existential dissatisfaction despite seemingly having her life together. When a tumultuous New Year’s Eve party leaves her literally and metaphorically picking herself up from the floor, Max embarks on what she hopes will be a journey toward stability and conventional happiness. What she finds instead is Vincent—a corporate lawyer whose earnest care feels both foreign and necessary—and a reckoning with questions about forgiveness that prove far more complex than she anticipated.

The Architecture of Modern Relationships

Character Development That Cuts Deep

Dinan’s greatest strength lies in her ability to craft characters who feel painfully, beautifully human. Max emerges as a protagonist who defies easy categorization—she’s sharp-tongued yet vulnerable, successful yet deeply insecure, progressive yet yearning for traditional stability. Her internal monologue crackles with wit and self-awareness, often undercutting her own moments of vulnerability with humor that feels both protective and authentic.

Vincent, meanwhile, could have easily fallen into the trap of being either too perfect or irredeemably flawed. Instead, Dinan presents him as genuinely caring yet carrying the weight of a past mistake so profound it threatens to derail everything good he’s built. The revelation of his involvement in Alex’s story—a trans woman he outed and abandoned during surgery in Thailand—serves as the novel’s moral fulcrum, forcing both characters and readers to grapple with uncomfortable questions about redemption and forgiveness.

The supporting cast, particularly Simone and Fred, provides crucial texture to the narrative. Simone’s fierce loyalty and professional struggles offer a compelling subplot about female friendship and ambition, while Fred’s presence serves as a constant reminder that people can be simultaneously caring friends and capable of terrible cruelty.

Writing Style That Mirrors Its Subject

Dinan’s prose style perfectly complements her thematic concerns. Her sentences often mirror Max’s thought patterns—sharp, digressive, peppered with cultural references and self-deprecating observations. The narrative voice feels distinctly millennial without falling into stereotype, capturing the particular anxiety of a generation caught between idealism and pragmatism:

“Sometimes you just feel it. It’s not like he’d admit it. But sometimes you just know.”

This deceptively simple observation encapsulates much of the novel’s emotional truth. Dinan excels at these moments of crystalline clarity amid the chaos of modern relationships.

Thematic Complexity and Moral Ambiguity

The Price of Forgiveness

The novel’s central question—whether love can survive moral disappointment—refuses easy resolution. Max’s discovery of Vincent’s past forces her to confront not just his failures, but her own capacity for forgiveness and compromise. Dinan doesn’t offer pat answers about redemption; instead, she explores the messy reality of loving someone whose past actions conflict with your values.

The Alex storyline, revealed gradually through flashbacks, serves as more than just plot device. It becomes a meditation on youth, fear, and the long shadows cast by moments of moral cowardice. Vincent’s younger self—nineteen, scared, and ultimately selfish—feels recognizably human rather than monstrous, which makes the moral calculations even more complex.

Trans Identity in Contemporary Literature

While Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan is fundamentally a love story, it also offers nuanced insights into trans experience in contemporary Britain. Max’s navigation of heteronormative spaces, her complicated relationship with visibility, and her interactions with Vincent’s family provide authentic glimpses into the particular challenges faced by trans women in relationships with cisgender men.

Dinan avoids both victimization narratives and unrealistic optimism, instead presenting a character who is simultaneously resilient and vulnerable, confident and insecure. Max’s transness is integral to her character without defining her entirely—a balance many authors struggle to achieve.

Structural Strengths and Minor Weaknesses

Narrative Architecture

The novel’s structure, alternating between Max’s present-day crisis and Vincent’s past in Thailand, creates effective dramatic tension. The gradual revelation of Vincent’s involvement with Alex builds suspense while allowing readers to understand both characters’ emotional journeys. The inclusion of Alex’s perspective, though brief, adds crucial depth to what could have been a one-sided narrative.

However, some readers may find the pacing uneven in places. The wedding sequence, while beautifully written and thematically relevant, occasionally feels extended beyond its narrative necessity. Similarly, certain scenes in France, though rich in character development, sometimes slow the momentum toward the novel’s climactic revelations.

Cultural and Social Commentary

Dinan weaves sharp observations about class, race, and millennial anxiety throughout the narrative without ever feeling preachy. The portrayal of Vincent’s family dynamics, Max’s relationship with her parents, and the various social circles they navigate feels authentic and lived-in. The novel captures the particular anxiety of educated thirty-somethings caught between idealistic expectations and pragmatic realities.

Comparison to Contemporary Works

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan joins a growing canon of LGBTQ+ literature that refuses to sanitize queer experience for mainstream comfort. It shares DNA with works like Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby and Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, though Dinan’s approach is more grounded in realism than either of those works.

The novel’s exploration of moral complexity also echoes the work of authors like Sally Rooney and Hanya Yanagihara, though Dinan brings a distinctly queer perspective to questions of love and forgiveness that feels fresh and necessary.

Areas for Growth

While Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan succeeds on most levels, it occasionally suffers from its own ambitions. Some subplot threads—particularly those involving Simone’s professional crisis—feel underdeveloped despite their thematic relevance. The novel’s ending, while emotionally satisfying, might leave some readers wanting more concrete resolution to the questions it raises.

Additionally, certain supporting characters occasionally veer toward stereotype, particularly some of the wedding party members and Vincent’s work colleagues. While this may be intentional commentary on the homogeneous nature of certain social circles, it sometimes feels like missed opportunities for deeper characterization.

Final Verdict: A Powerful, Uncomfortable Truth

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan is not a comfortable read, nor is it meant to be. Dinan has crafted a novel that insists on moral complexity in an age that often demands simple answers. The book’s greatest achievement is its refusal to let either its characters or its readers off the hook when it comes to the difficult work of forgiveness and growth.

Max and Vincent’s relationship feels authentic in its messiness—neither idealized nor demonized, but presented as the complicated reality of two flawed people trying to build something meaningful together. The novel suggests that love might not conquer all, but it might be worth the effort anyway.

For readers seeking nuanced LGBTQ+ representation, complex relationship dynamics, or simply excellent contemporary fiction, Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan delivers on all counts. While it may not provide the cathartic resolution some readers crave, it offers something more valuable: a honest examination of how we love and forgive in an imperfect world.

This is a novel that will likely generate discussion and debate—about forgiveness, about trans rights, about the nature of redemption itself. In our current cultural moment, such conversations feel not just relevant but essential. Nicola Dinan has proven herself to be a writer unafraid to tackle difficult questions, and Disappoint Me confirms her as one of the most important voices in contemporary queer literature.

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  • Publisher: The Dial Press
  • Genre: Romance, LGBTQ
  • First Publication: 2025
  • Language: English

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This is a novel that will likely generate discussion and debate—about forgiveness, about trans rights, about the nature of redemption itself. It's a challenging, beautifully written exploration of love's moral complexities that will stay with readers long after the final page.Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan