Reviews with content warning for Violence - Detransition, Baby

First off, I need to just come out & say it:
There are no heroes in this book.

Every single character is super flawed (like all humans really). Which is one of the reasons I loved it! Another reason is that it accurately depicts life for city-dwelling trans people (and in particular trans women) in the 21st century.

For instance, some of the settings include picnics in the park, queer dance parties, funerals, & sex workers' clients' apartments.

FYI there are some pretty rough moments in the book depicting violence & internalized transphobic narratives so if yr trans probably best to read it when yr in a good (enough) headspace.

Content Warnings

kaii's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.5

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diano's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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brnineworms's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-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

4.5

Messy bitches all round.
Exceptionally well-written, until the ending where it felt like the brakes were slammed; it faltered then just kind of stopped, and not in a satisfyingly unsatisfying way. Still, I liked it a lot.

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taibreakfast's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Extremely smart and tender story centered on the heart and complexities of gender, forming family, self love, and learning our patterns, with some unexpectedly hilarious moments and jokes. The ways we as humans are constantly navigating social dynamics and how that's multiplied by a million for trans folks in our society and how our own desires and needs are made complicated or thwarted by all of that. Did I mention: extremely smart observations on gender and all the ways, big and small, that our lives are mediated by gender norms. Highly recommend!

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mmatti300's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective fast-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

5.0

I loved this book and I am excited to check out Torrey Peters' short stories (which are free on her website for anyone curious). I think that the reflections that this story provided on womanhood, motherhood, and queer identity are incredibly important. It was refreshing to hear about trans experiences from a more nuanced position while I also think that the fact that every character is in some way an outsider to particular experiences is incredibly interesting and important. This a book that will stick with me for a very long time and has put me on a Sex and the City craze.

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amymcphrsn's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

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

3.75

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elerireads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

This is a very tricky one to review.

There wasn't a huge amount of plot to speak of. The premise was essentially just a good catalyst to expose and illustrate a bunch of tricky issues related to how we define womanhood and what the trans perspective has to add. Of course, a lot of it revolved around motherhood in particular. This meant that mostly this book consisted of long passages of abstract discussion of gender and the trans community. Some of it was in discussions between characters but a lot of it was just characters' long internal monologues. This runs the risk of being irritatingly preachy and veering into 'well if it's got no plot and is pretty much just a bunch of essays about transness and motherhood, then why not just make it that and ditch the pretence of being a novel at all?' territory for me. Obviously I can't really speak to its authenticity, but for what my opinion is worth I think it managed to avoid that irritating preachiness because it was actually believable. I was convinced that these characters would actually spend that much time thinking and talking about gender, and that they were realistic representations of (a part of) the trans community. Basically it felt like a realistic portrayal, aimed at an LGBT+ audience rather than 'educating' a cis audience etc.

Unfortunately, the character who didn't quite seem realistic was Katrina, upon whom what little plot there was hinged. I thought her initial assessment - that Ames just wanted to use her as a vessel for a child for his ex - was a valid and entirely justified interpretation of what he was asking, and this was just never satisfactorily refuted. Then she had a chat with her mum and just like that changed her mind and decided she was actually ok with the idea of bringing up a child with a woman she had never met! Then, when she finds out Reese had been having sex with her friend's husband, she flips out. But not really because of the morality of sleeping with a married man, oh no, it's because he had HIV!?! Honestly I think I must have missed something here because I genuinely don't understand why that would bother her. She's supposed to be all educated about HIV because her friend had talked to her about it a lot, so she would know he was undetectable, and it's not like she was sleeping with Reese. Was it some fear of somehow passing it on to the child? So confused.

Another issue I had is that the whole book is just dripping with misogyny. A lot of it is internalised, which I kind of get. There's the whole weird bit where Reese manages to find it gender-affirming to be hit and made to feel small by a man, which is awful but I understand. On the other hand, utter disdain and contempt for cis women is a constant feature and is not really excusable. It's clear Reese is supposed to be deeply flawed, and she herself acknowledges in some places that she has underestimated them or hadn't thought of some element or other, i.e. I don't think the author is actually endorsing that viewpoint. However, it's very jarring given the kind of enlightened, thoughtful way the characters approach pretty much everything else, and so much of the way cis women were portrayed reminded me of exactly the way arsehole misogynistic men talk about women that I don't think it can all be explained away by "it's from the perspective of a flawed character". Torrey Peters could really do better here.

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