Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan: book review
Overview: Max falls down the stairs at a New Years party, and her life begins to drift in a new direction, away from her break-up with Arthur and her poetry collection and to a phase of life where she learns to love domesticity with her new boyfriend, Vincent. She hits it off immediately with Vincent and then her story begins to descend into the dramas that befall daily life—secrets that eventually come out, health scares, forgiving your parents, etc. By the end of the novel, Max's life is full of questions once again, and she has to decide if she wants to keep running or turn around and face them head on. Overall: 4
Characters: 4 I like Max and her voice. She has that sad girl lit vibe that I tend to eat up (I mean, look at the cover). She works as a lawyer training AI for this online company but has also published a book of poetry and is a part of the queer arts scene in London. She goes through an interesting evolution over the course of the book where the problems across her relationships, family, friendships, and even relationship to mortality go back to a somewhat singular question around what it means to forgive and who deserves to give and receive forgiveness. I came to really enjoy my time with Max, and she was by far the stronger narrator.
We meet Vincent through Max's eyes on this first date that kicks off the real beginning of the novel. He's kind and attentive. Thoughtful and interested in the arts even though he's a corporate lawyer. Vincent is different than anyone else Max has dated, and he teaches her, in a way, the value of stability. But Vincent is hiding a secret from his gap year that unfolds as a parallel storyline for the reader. I found that I really liked Vincent rendered through Max's eyes, but his own point of view chapters disappointed me, well before the ultimate scene that puts him in question for Max.
As far as other point of view characters, we get a cast of friends that also force Max to grapple with this central theme/question of forgiveness or being surprised by what people you love are capable of. Simone is Max's best friend. They've grown up together, and Simone is the main carry-over from Max's prior life into her new relationship, and she works in modeling. Then there's Fred, Vincent's friend, who the reader gets more information on than Max does which just creates a whole moral train wreck only the reader can see coming.
Plot: 4 This is a book I read slowly because I read it as I was in the midst of moving to Dublin, but at the same time, the plot doesn't demand constant reading. I enjoyed it and wanted to make time for it, but the energy is strong at the beginning and the end is gripping as all the small threads of disaster braided together, but the middle sagged. I was watching through my fingers by the last chapter in France. There could maybe have been a bit more tension strung through the middle or simply a trimming, but at the same time, not every novel needs to be propulsive, and the final impression the novel left was quite thought provoking, so I don't know if I'd change it. Just don't expect a page turner. My main quibble is the ending. It's both too open and too closed of an ending for my taste, and giving the close to Vincent in a sort of summary chapter just felt like such a missed opportunity. I would've rather the book ended earlier when Max has to decide which way she's getting on the Tube. That completely had me, and the choice to keep going just a bit further made me wish the book actually took a larger scope when I would've been totally satisfied a few pages before.
Writing: 4 I found the writing to be a little unbalanced, sadly, in this novel. Dinan does an incredible job shaping Max's voice, and I loved spending time with Max, but then these chapters with Vincent would pop up and the voice just felt so much weaker and unnecessary. I found myself groaning when they came up and thinking that I wanted to spend time running around London with Max not in Thailand meandering around through Vincent's weak prose. Of course, I can see by the ending why Dinan does this split POV and timeline situation because it does impact the final reveal, as the reader has information that Max doesn't that makes it far more explosive. But I think that the reveal would've still had impact without these chapters. The book has so little tension through its entire middle that this level 3000 tension created by this device maybe doesn't seem necessary enough to weigh the book down with Vincent's whole trip to Thailand. At the very least, his story starts way too far back and has way too much build. I can see why this choice was made, but I don't think it ultimately served the book.
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