Reviews with content warning for Infertility - Detransition, Baby

Amazing and beautifully written! I felt like in the third quarter the story was getting a little muddled and confused, but it was really tied together by bringing back the kind of thesis of the Sex and the City problem. The characters were really compelling and the split between Amy and Reese's past relationship and their current dynamics felt really well-balanced, where both were so compelling that I didn't find myself preferring one to the other.

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sfbookgirl's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This character-driven novel is incredibly powerful and insightful although I do have to warn you that it is a heavy read. Torrey Peters’s story explores gender, motherhood, and the trans community and offers readers a complicated story centering around Reese, a trans woman who is in love with her girlfriend, Amy. But then, Amy decides to detransition and becomes Ames, and everything Reese envisioned for them to one day become a family of three unravels.

When Ames discovers that his new cis girlfriend, Katrina, is pregnant, Ames wonders if he can still make create a family with Reese in which Ames, Reese, and Katrina raise the baby together. The plot mostly consists of Ames, Reese, and Katrina attempting to navigate this messy relationship prior to the birth of the baby. Peters beautifully depicts the specificity of the trans community while also illustrating a universal feeling of sympathy. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars was that I found some of the plot to ramble on a bit, but overall I really enjoyed this one.

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karolinaz's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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oliviareese's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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lukests's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I found this book difficult to read. Some of the language used to refer to trans people and their experiences is outdated and uncomfortable to read. The characters don't have a lot of redeeming qualities about them.
<Spoiler> I also feel it took too long to get to the interesting part of the book. I was genuinely excited to read about queer parenthood. How the trans and cis women were going to figure it out together and how a cis woman might learn more about her own identity when going through this journey with a trans woman. The book spent so long building up the characters, and also giving them qualities that made it hard to root for any of them, when it finally hit the part where the women are exploring how they're going to do this together I felt majorly let down by how brief this is and how easily it all falls apart. Also Katrina being Asian American feels awkwardly shoe horned in, not well developed, and at places stereotypical of how Asian Americans are represented.

Overall I'm happy I read this book, it was an interesting look into a trans authors POV, however the story left me a bit disappointed.

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