Detransition, Baby: A Novel

Both loved and struggled with this one. What I enjoyed: intriguing, layered characters, some snappy prose and pointed observations of several NYC social scenes, very frank (why is this so unusual?) discussion of sex, exploration of so many themes - what it means to be a mother, a woman, class themes, the nature of desire, and of course what it’s like to exist as a trans woman today. What I struggled with: the premise (and therefore most of the plot). Ames to me was less developed among the main characters and I never felt like his need to have Reese as a co-parent was fully fleshed out. It felt to me like a forced device to bring these three characters together. And then because this novel is ambitious, and I’d venture in part because trans voices are so underrepresented, this novel had a lot of telling rather than showing. Portions were slow for me to get through, weighted by the explication. Ultimately really glad to have read this - and we had a fantastic discussion at my book club. As a half-Asian woman in business myself I was pleasantly surprised to see myself represented in Katrina, so I can only imagine how important this is as a small step towards trans representation (albeit within a specific subset)

I'm an adult, and yet, I don't feel I'll ever be mature enough to have any thoughts about this book. Not when I'm 40, 50, 80 or even dead.
It's a masterpiece.

The characters are not very lovable and the timeline is not super clear.

appreciated the opportunity to read a book by an openly trans author and learn from their perspective but this book did drag on in some areas with a bit of an unsatisfying ending

I was really happy to immerse myself in a queer story, however I found some of the sequencing clunky and the end dissatisfying. I do appreciate a lot of the detailed storytelling.