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.

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.

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.

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.

Disappoint Me is anything but a disappointing follow-up in its smart exploration of heteronormativity and the weight of expectation.

Sharply insightful, warm and heartbreaking

The author of the award-winning Bellies returns with another insightful dissection of millennial life … tackling tricky friendships and toxic masculinity.

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.

A very modern love story and Dinan is very much the woman to write it

In the follow-up to her award-winning and critically acclaimed first novel Bellies, Dinan examines the pain and growth that disillusionment brings… Dinan writes so intelligently about regret, remorse and hope – and still manages to nail humour, too.