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planning2read's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
sad
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault and Transphobia
Moderate: Sexual violence, Domestic abuse, and Physical abuse
schopenhauers_poodle's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
A book written about trans characters and by a trans author becoming a bestseller is a huge achievement on its own. The writing is, however, uneven though entertaining and promising.
"Detransition" has great pacing and an interesting premise based on some taboo topics, (detransitioning, entering into a hetero-passing relationship, etc.). I found myself re-reading the chapters focused on Ames and Reese's reflections on past relationships and coming out. Peters' writing shines in those parts with sincerity and a kind of painful, bittersweet memorializing of past selves. It touched me deeply.
Reese is my favorite and the most captivating of all the characters in the book. She's hurt, self-destructive, full of yearning, but also smart, thoughtful when she wants to be, observant, very funny, and full of emotional depth that the other two in the trio seem not able to access. Out of all the characters in the book she seems the most brave.
Conversely, the weakest of the trio and plot is Katrina. She is the least developed and least convincing character. Frankly, she's annoying. Peters writes her trans characters so vividly, but I think having a straight, cis, and Asian character was too far from her own experience to write to the same level of depth. It was hard for me to understand why Ames was so attracted to her and why he was so committed to a relationship with her.
In the reviews I've read, I've heard criticism of Peters' writing, specifically that the sentences are convoluted, awkward. I have a feeling she writes very close to her own speaking voice. If you share this criticism, the audiobook might be a better experience by restoring Peters' speaking cadence.
"Detransition" has great pacing and an interesting premise based on some taboo topics, (detransitioning, entering into a hetero-passing relationship, etc.). I found myself re-reading the chapters focused on Ames and Reese's reflections on past relationships and coming out. Peters' writing shines in those parts with sincerity and a kind of painful, bittersweet memorializing of past selves. It touched me deeply.
Reese is my favorite and the most captivating of all the characters in the book. She's hurt, self-destructive, full of yearning, but also smart, thoughtful when she wants to be, observant, very funny, and full of emotional depth that the other two in the trio seem not able to access. Out of all the characters in the book she seems the most brave.
Conversely, the weakest of the trio and plot is Katrina. She is the least developed and least convincing character. Frankly, she's annoying. Peters writes her trans characters so vividly, but I think having a straight, cis, and Asian character was too far from her own experience to write to the same level of depth. It was hard for me to understand why Ames was so attracted to her and why he was so committed to a relationship with her.
In the reviews I've read, I've heard criticism of Peters' writing, specifically that the sentences are convoluted, awkward. I have a feeling she writes very close to her own speaking voice. If you share this criticism, the audiobook might be a better experience by restoring Peters' speaking cadence.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Transphobia, and Violence
moonpeach's review
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
slow-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
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse
Minor: Abortion and Miscarriage
anthsoprano's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
honestly torrey peters' writing is so funny and captivating and brutally real. written by a trans woman for trans women, but also as someone under the trans umbrella, if i had tried to read this a year ago i'd throw it down the stairs with how real it hits.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Stalking, Domestic abuse, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Miscarriage and Outing
lanid's review
emotional
reflective
- 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
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Outing, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Transphobia
Moderate: Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Dysphoria, Adult/minor relationship, Deadnaming, and Abortion
Minor: Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Sexual violence, Misogyny, and Suicide attempt
cecilialau_'s review against another edition
3.75
It’s been confirmed that long chapters work against my experience of a book… Unfortunately. I found it hard at times to pick this book back up while also really wanting to love it. There are some cracking narrative parts in it for sure throughout. I did also find some parts of it a bit long. Maybe it was a case of “wrong time” for me with this one atm. I’m really glad I read it though.
It’s a story that’s insightful and definitely worth telling (and absorbing) - as is anything outside the heteronormative btw. For ppl to learn and expand their horizons - including on the question on motherhood within and outside the lgbtq+ community.
I found the characters messy and flawed and unlikeable at time which worked really well to illustrate the (difficult) dynamic between the trio.
It didn’t sit right with me that Iris kept using the she/her pronoun with Ames even though it might have been a subtle way for the author to say that misgendering doesn’t just happen outside the trans community, but if so I found it too subtle as it wasn’t pointed out and I just thought it was disrespectful and unnecessarily mean (even though Iris dislikes Ames).
It’s a story that’s insightful and definitely worth telling (and absorbing) - as is anything outside the heteronormative btw. For ppl to learn and expand their horizons - including on the question on motherhood within and outside the lgbtq+ community.
I found the characters messy and flawed and unlikeable at time which worked really well to illustrate the (difficult) dynamic between the trio.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Deadnaming, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Outing, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Transphobia, and Violence
michaelgfrd's review
challenging
funny
reflective
tense
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia and Domestic abuse
kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
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
2.5
While interesting, I really struggled to get into this book. In part, I think it was the way it was written — the back and forth between characters and time periods made the book feel choppy and disconnected. The entire time I was reading, I never fell into the story. It just felt like I was reading — not experiencing it. The insights about being trans were the highlight for me. I felt deep sorrow for the characters who wanted so deeply to be themselves in ways society or biology would not allow.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Car accident, Emotional abuse, Racial slurs, Blood, Medical content, Misogyny, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Transphobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Homophobia, Abandonment, Deadnaming, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Lesbophobia, Toxic relationship, Biphobia, Pregnancy, Death, Suicide, Sexual harassment, Bullying, Outing, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual violence, Abortion, Death of parent, Infidelity, and Sexism
leahslitlibrary's review against another edition
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Abortion, Deadnaming, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Outing
bookwormbi's review
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Whatever I feel about this book, it is a fascinating read. I have a counter argument for every opinion I have about the book, which makes it very difficult to boil down my thoughts into something that makes sense. To me, this book is what happens when a white trans woman is terrified of writing the trans equivalent of Girls, and then, inevitably, writes the trans equivalent of Girls. This is most obvious in the book’s treatment of race and identity politics. It took me a moment to figure out whether Peters was a self aware antiracist white writer writing white characters who were clumsy about race, or if she herself was clumsy about race. (Spoiler alert: it’s the latter.) Katrina is the mouthpiece for the racial considerations that Reese and Ames sidestep, but it just got exhausting to listen to her constantly fighting with clueless white people. To be clear, the concerns Katrina brings up are important and I appreciate Peters’s attempt to bring a different perspective into her chronicle of Ames and Reese’s privileged experience of transness, but as a person of color, it hurt my heart to imagine Katrina having this fight with Ames and Reese for the rest of her life. At no point does the narrative acknowledge the emotional labor Katrina is putting into this whole experience not just as a woman, but as a woman of color. Reese and Ames then marshal their trans experiences against her, and it just turns into this very futile game of oppression Olympics in which Peters, try as she might to detach herself from the outcome, ultimately lands her sympathies with the white women.
I got the impression that much of what I disliked about Detransition, Baby was Peters’s attempt to be write a story that could ostensibly be for all trans women from a very narrow perspective, instead of owning that narrowness. The best parts of the book—the Sex and the City Problem, the juvenile elephants, the journeys of Reese and Ames’s transitions and detransition and the dissolution of their relationship—were the parts where Peters wrote as a white trans woman for white trans women. In the wider book landscape, there are very few trans stories, and even less stories about trans women, and I understand Peters’s desire to try to universalize her experience a little bit. To her credit, she rarely tries to speak for trans women of color (although she certainly speaks for cis women of color via Katrina), and much of the discussion about race and racism seems to be a well-intentioned attempt to telegraph her awareness of her privilege, so people don’t say things like what I’m saying right now. To be frank, I wish this book could be the trans version of one of the thousands of TV shows that centers cishet white men and doesn’t trouble itself to think about anybody else. Peters is not the first queer or trans writer whose anxiety over whether or not Twitter would call them racist I could feel through the page. I’m tired of it, frankly. I am a trans person of color, I know I am exactly who Peters is afraid of, and I understand why. I can see a version of this book that I dislike because there are no people of color in it and the characters’ racial insensitivities go unchallenged. But to be honest? I think I’d respect that version of the book a bit more.
I got the impression that much of what I disliked about Detransition, Baby was Peters’s attempt to be write a story that could ostensibly be for all trans women from a very narrow perspective, instead of owning that narrowness. The best parts of the book—the Sex and the City Problem, the juvenile elephants, the journeys of Reese and Ames’s transitions and detransition and the dissolution of their relationship—were the parts where Peters wrote as a white trans woman for white trans women. In the wider book landscape, there are very few trans stories, and even less stories about trans women, and I understand Peters’s desire to try to universalize her experience a little bit. To her credit, she rarely tries to speak for trans women of color (although she certainly speaks for cis women of color via Katrina), and much of the discussion about race and racism seems to be a well-intentioned attempt to telegraph her awareness of her privilege, so people don’t say things like what I’m saying right now. To be frank, I wish this book could be the trans version of one of the thousands of TV shows that centers cishet white men and doesn’t trouble itself to think about anybody else. Peters is not the first queer or trans writer whose anxiety over whether or not Twitter would call them racist I could feel through the page. I’m tired of it, frankly. I am a trans person of color, I know I am exactly who Peters is afraid of, and I understand why. I can see a version of this book that I dislike because there are no people of color in it and the characters’ racial insensitivities go unchallenged. But to be honest? I think I’d respect that version of the book a bit more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Domestic abuse, and Transphobia
Minor: Racism