Disappoint Me

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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?

'Nicola Dinan’s second book confirms to me that she is one of our most exciting writers . . . Disappoint Me is an addictive read, that I really did not want to end' Travis Alabanza, author of None of the Above

© Nicola Dinan 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

A riveting tale of finding lasting companionship. Despite the title, it’s unlikely to disappoint.
Observer
Disappoint Me is a refreshingly unsentimental and moving exploration of millennial ennui, prickly friendships and toxic masculinity. It eschews essentialism by depicting modern relationships and the flow of power and secrecy with astuteness and compassion, cementing Dinan as one of the UK’s most perceptive young novelists with her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary behaviour.
Guardian
Nicola Dinan’s observations are so razor-sharp that you’re sure you’ve met her characters: the self-important East London poet, the over-friendly girl in the bathroom queue, the gap-year student convinced he’s worldly after two weeks on a silent retreat in India. For this reason, every description and bit of dialogue is delicious to read, and if she nailed it in her debut novel Bellies, she’s mastered it in Disappoint Me. The book follows a blossoming relationship between twentysomethings Max and Vincent in present-day London, peppered with flashbacks to Vincent’s first relationship with a trans woman in his teenage years. It is pacy, perfectly pitched and emotionally honest: I loved every page.
Stylist, ‘Best Books of 2025’
A story of millennial fears and forgiveness, reckoning with past mistakes, stylishly interweaving two compelling voices as they unravel their own love story. Disappoint Me follows Dinan’s debut novel, Bellies, which is another example of deeply empathetic writing and elastic endings that stay with you long after.
Vogue, ‘Best Books of 2025’
As the title indicates, it explores the fundamental point that building a sustainable love for someone involves them disappointing you: eventually, the dreams and expectations that we attach to a person will be somewhat compromised. I think the novel explores that so amazingly.
Shon Faye, Guardian
Disappoint Me is anything but a disappointing follow-up in its smart exploration of heteronormativity and the weight of expectation.
Dazed, ‘The 12 Most Anticipated Novels of 2025’
Sharply insightful, warm and heartbreaking.
Cosmopolitan, ‘Best Books of 2025’
The author of the award-winning Bellies returns with another insightful dissection of millennial life ... tackling tricky friendships and toxic masculinity.
Harper's Bazaar
A riveting, hilarious and totally devastating love story… This exploration of millennial angst, race, and trans panic will have you gripped and sets Dinan as a literary voice to watch.
Elle, ‘Best Books of 2025’
A very modern love story and Dinan is very much the woman to write it.
GQ, ‘Best Books of 2025’

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