In February 2024, a bookstagram friend recommended Bellies to me. I ended up absolutely devouring it in one evening. Later in the year, I passed on the Bellies love to another friend and joined her for a re-read. Bellies quickly became one of my all-time favourite books. Flash forward to the end of summer 2024: I’m now long-distance besties with the aforementioned bookstagram friend, and Disappoint Me appears on NetGalley. I pressed that request button possibly faster than I ever have, and, excitingly, my friend managed to get her hands on a copy too. Flash forward again to December 2024, a month before the release date, and I’m being read to from Disappoint Me by the same bookstagram friend, except now she’s my girlfriend, and we’re reading together in the same place. All that to say, I had high expectations for this book, and it saddens me so much to say that I felt incredibly let down…

Disappoint Me follows a trans woman, Max, and her cis boyfriend, Vincent, as their relationship develops and they confront their respective pasts and futures. As readers, we follow both Max and Vincent’s perspectives, alternating between 2023 London and 2012 Thailand.

As we saw when reading Bellies, Nicola is astoundingly skilled at writing real, messy, and relatable characters that you truly can’t help but become invested in and fall a little in love with. The characters in Bellies hold such an incredibly special place in my heart, but sadly, I can’t say the same for all the characters in this book. I greatly appreciated the found-family aspects and the overarching characterisation, but my goodness, we spent far too much time and energy inside Vincent’s cis male brain. Much of the time spent with Vincent was incredibly uncomfortable (not in a good way) and often rife with transphobia. This was not only hard to read but also detracted from the focus on Max. I would have loved to have heard more from Max (and Alex, who is introduced later). I almost DNF’d this book purely because of how much I couldn’t stand Vincent’s perspective.

The inclusion of certain transphobic comments (usually within Vincent’s perspective) often felt misplaced and did little to support the overall story arc, not to mention how triggering they may be for some readers. I found myself craving the balance and nuance we saw in Bellies. I also need to mention that I was incredibly disappointed by the Harry Potter reference made in passing in an entirely uncritical way.

I want to end by acknowledging that I still love Nicola Dinan’s writing style and her ability to so seamlessly turn incredibly real and powerful experiences into fictional accounts so vivid that you forget you’re reading fiction. I will definitely continue to read everything Nicola writes and although Disappoint Me wasn't for me, I will forever hold Bellies close.

I’ll conclude by saying that if you loved Bellies and have been excited to read more from Nicola Dinan, then by all means, go for it! Many other reviewers seem to love it. Just be sure to keep the transphobia content warning in mind.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for the e-ARC. All opinions are my own.