Disappoint Me

Reviews

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. The author of the award-winning Bellies returns with another insightful dissection of millennial life ... tackling tricky friendships and toxic masculinity. Sharply insightful, warm and heartbreaking A very modern love story and Dinan is very much the woman to write it Nicola Dinan is able to bring an incisive wit to the big questions of modern relationships: namely, how do we know when to trust another person with our heart and how do we show our love to one another. Disappoint Me is a study in human frailty that is riveting, funny and devastating. It explores heteronormativity, friendship and getting older but, most of all, it’s about confronting the disturbing fact that we cannot ever fully know the person we are sleeping next to. It’s rare I read a book in one sitting but I was carried along by these compelling characters. 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. 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. Disappoint Me is anything but a disappointing follow-up in its smart exploration of heteronormativity and the weight of expectation. 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. 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. Expand reviews