Review: Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, Disappoint Me is an engrossing, heartfelt story of love, loss and the challenges of being true to yourself, as a poet-cum-legal councellor trans woman decides to take a stab at heteronormativity.
Max didn’t mean to fall for Vincent – a corporate lawyer and hobby baker whose trad friendship group are a world away from her life as a trans woman. But after years of bad dates and dysphoria, he’s a breath of fresh air. Their connection seems genuine, his care feels real.
But 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?
REVIEWED BY ALICE MARSHALL
When Max falls down the stairs at a NYE party following a painful breakup, waking up alone in the hospital feels something like rock bottom. Wanting to get her life on track, Max lands on the answer: dating, subsequently surrendering herself to heteronormativity. Soon she begins dating Vincent, a corporate lawyer who likes baking, and who will do anything to reassure Max of his feelings despite the fissure that forms between him and his Chinese parents when he tells them about Max.
Nicola Dinan’s sophomore novel moves life on steadily from her debut. Where Bellies was, in many ways, a second coming-of-age, battling the haze of post-university life and transitioning, Disappoint Me pushes on as all-new anxieties materialise on the cusp of thirty. Told through a dual narrative between Max in the present and Vincent during his gap year in Thailand, this is a story about the frictions posed between queerness and the binary, and about the small hypocrisies that live within us. It is also a story of forgiveness, and whether or not we should be defined by our last worst mistake.
No doubt, Dinan is a real talent. Her observations on the lives of millennials, dating and identity searching are razor-sharp and often painfully, hilariously astute. One minute, she’s delving into Max’s dysphoria triggered by Vincent’s trad friends, the next, Max is pondering what pointers he picked up from reading Detransition, Baby. Worlds collide, and the comedic timing is perfection.
Her characters are divine, equal measures spiky, intimidating, and incredibly vibrant. This is such a whip-smart exploration of society today with so much to unpack. While Bellies holds a special place in my heart, Dinan really has kicked it up a notch with Disappoint Me, a piece of literary fiction that challenges its reader and pushes the boundaries of what trans narratives in literature can be.