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Disappoint Me

Disappoint Me

Summary

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 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Reviews

  • Nicola Dinan’s second book confirms to me that she is one of our most exciting writers. Delving into how we fall in and out of love, Dinan knows how to write directly to the flaws we show when in love, with biting wit and laugh out loud humour. Yet the characters linger with you after you have finished. Disappoint Me is an addictive read, that I really did not want to end.
    Travis Alabanza, author of None of the Above

About the author

Nicola Dinan

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, shortlisted for the Mo Siewcharran Prize, Polari First Book Prize and the Diverse Book Awards, and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Disappoint Me, releases in 2025.
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