This book exceeded all my expectations. The plot seemed kooky and could have been silly in the hands of a lesser writer. Torrey Peters manages to create an interesting plot with believable likable flawed characters. this book addresses a lot of issues - gender, trans, queerness, family. Sometimes it is in the form of a sort of lecture, but not like I, the reader, is being lectured. More like I was being quietly, enjoyably educated. That makes it sound like this book is unbearably earnest - it isn't. I found myself reading the chapter about doTERRA out loud on a Zoom call, because it was the funniest thing I've read.

And then, near the end, I got worried that the author was going to stuff it all up. That's how invested I was in the story. But the ending is perfect. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Serpents Tail publishing for this free review copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

Sadly, I found this to be a dull read. The present tense writing style, the extensive backstory incorporated in the 'now' (which end up slowing/interrupting a scene). The dialogue doesn't ring true to life and Peters' prose is somewhat contrived. Still, given that this is an #ownvoice novel discussing relevant issues I wouldn't discourage others from reading this. This book was simply not my cup of tea.

This novel, about an attempt to create a family, is so outside of my experience, but I loved it. Peters gives us two timelines of Ames/Amy’s life, one where she is a trans woman called Amy and one later when she has detransitioned and is living as a cis man called Ames, and has got his colleague Katrina pregnant. They then decide to explore raising the baby with Reese, Amy’s ex girlfriend, who is a trans woman. It sounds more confusing when you try to explain it, because Peters has done an amazing job of keeping the plot understandable! Ames/Amy’s pronouns shift between she/her and he/him depending on the stage in their life, which could have been jarring but totally suits the story. It’s a thoughtful and original novel, written by a trans author, and my impression is that it is written for everyone - trans, cis, or otherwise - because the finer points of uniquely trans experiences are explained carefully, without being patronising. I wasn’t sure about the cliff-hanger ending, but I can see how I would have been disappointed if it had explicitly gone one way or the other, so I understand the decision. Detransition, Baby will be published early next year and I hope it gets the attention the novel deserves.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Detransition Baby is a challenging read, but an essential one. Not being trans, I can't speak to how accurately Peters has portrayed trans women but it certainly feels real because it's messy and emotional and people do things that aren't 'nice'. Every character is flawed and the narrative discusses so many issues that it should feel overloaded - but it doesn't. I'll definitely be recommending this book widely.

I do not know how to describe this book, who it is for and why one should read it - I have mixed feelings about "Detransition, Baby". First of all, I thought the author was writing to different novels - one was a chaotic, almost pornographic read, the other one was a well-written and thoughtful study on womanhood and parenting. Those two books did not connect well. Secondly, I found it really hard to understand the dynamics and various issues each of the women (trans-women) faced. I had to spend a lot of time googling. In the end, I finished the book and I feel I learnt a lot - there is this whole world out there that we, cis-people (really, do I really need to refer to myself as CIS-woman nowadays to avoid any possible confusion?), know very little about.

I remember when I read "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I had discovered a whole new world - Nigeria, with its inhabitants, heroes, issues and happiness. I thought I would have the same experience with "Detransition, Baby" - a world of LGBTQ+, raw and real. It did not happen. I learnt a lot (thanks to Google), but I still fail to understand the world of transgender women. I have a very strong suspicion that if you are cis-woman (or man), this book might not be for you. It is a niche read which I could only recommend if you want to read more diverse topics and authors.

As to the humour that was promised - I did not laugh once.

An incredible book about gender identity, queer life and heartache. Shocking at times but extremely insightful and beautifully written, it took me on a rollercoaster of emotions 
Definitely recommend it

This is a knockout — I felt so lucky to be reading it and am very grateful for the advance copy. In a culture where traditionally published trans narratives increasingly revolve around carefully-packaged trauma to play on the sympathies of cis people, thank god for DETRANSITION, BABY. This is a book that actually reads like many of the trans people in my life: incisive, witty, sharp-edged. At first glance, and superficially, it seems a lot like any number of slightly exhausting novels currently on the market: disaffected NYC millennials ponder the vagaries of gender; have sex that makes them feel weird; live in shitty little apartments; engage with the vagaries of modernity. But simultaneously it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before. It transcends those trappings of form by being fantastically clear-eyed and empathetic. And, most of all, it is just writing in a completely different intellectual register to all those books about the alienation of heterosexuality by straight women who are far too close to heterosexuality to be able to analyse it convincingly. This makes it an enormously refreshing read, especially for anyone who is tired of ‘the millennial novel.’ I delighted in its moments of almost-farce (the difficulties of conducting a follow-that-car chase in an Uber when the driver needs you to input a new destination into the app every time you change course, for example). I loved that its portrait of queer community was cynical and bitchy in a way that only someone who has spent a decade in said community can be — cynical and bitchy without being pessimistic, or making any kind of tiresome didactic point about the perils of infighting. I will be buying copies for my friends, have already recommended the book to several people, and am going to dive into Peters’ back catalogue. More like this, please!!

I wanted to read this book as I'm aware I don't know enough about trans people and detransititioning, and it often helps to add to one's knowledge from the viewpoint of a novel. This was certainly an interesting take on relationships and motherhood with some memorable characters, but I did find it quite confusing at times and a bit over long.
Thank you to netgalley and serpents tail for an advance copy of this book.

I have to say I DNF this book. I started it with good faith in wanting to understand people who are trans.   I found Ames very presumptuous to ask somebody to be a mummy to his baby without discussing with the bio mother.  Its not just that though I got a little confused with who was what - which is what I wanted to understand more and not care about such things.  So I gave up and realised  I needed a different book to learn more.

Detransition, Baby is a brilliant book, but as is often the way when I adore something, I'm finding it tricky to review. It will definitely be received very differently depending upon who reads it, and probably not everyone will sing its praises as highly as I'm about to. Personally, I was gripped from the start, and was consistently late to things because I was too busy reading. I loved the narrative voice (regardless of whose point of view we were zooming in on), and the tone is very witty. That said, I think parts of Detransition, Baby will also stay with me for a long time - alongside the humour, there's a real depth of emotion and thought. This is a very honest book.

This book communicates so much about queerness, motherhood and the absolute mess of gender soup we all wade through every day (which some of us are very much more aware of than others) in such a witty, engaging and empathetic way. It's so important to have queer motherhood narratives and spaces to explore ways parenthood can be imagined, and Torrey Peters does that very well in this book. It's also got some really great humour in it, if you like me like slightly biting social commentary.

The three main characters are warmly written and so real and interesting and fleshed out- I dearly loved Reese and Katrina in particular. This is how you write messy people making messy decisions while making them understandable and likeable, which is an important and difficult skill to write about in fiction. A lot of what contributes to that is the honesty (maybe too honest for some people but lol, ok) of the narrative and the characters, the switching close-third person POVs helps the reader to understand where everyone's coming from and trying to go.

I also personally feel like I learnt some things about trans culture I didn't know before, especially de-transitioning (a sensitive and very much uncommon occurrence). The reasons for Ames's de-transition are very easy to empathise with and hard to weaponise against the trans community (as I'm aware the topic can be!). Ultimately it's a reminder that people and how we understand gender is all messy and that we all deserve respect, empathy and parenthood, should we want it, either way.

Detransition, Baby is a witty, cutting, and clever novel about relationships and motherhood, as three characters try to navigate if they're having a baby. Detransitioned Ames thought he was infertile, until he got his boss, Katrina, pregnant. Not sure about the role he'd take in parenting, he contacts his ex, Reese, with a proposition—to raise the baby with them. Since their breakup a few years ago, Reese has been lonely and sleeping with married men, feeling a like a trans elder with no one to mother, so this could be her chance for what she's dreamed of: a child.

One of the greatest things about this book for me was the writing, particularly the tone and detail. It can be blunt and brutal in deconstructing characters' ideas and lives, but also has a real emotional side (there's even some meta-commentary on this as characters make jokes at a funeral). This is literary fiction about negotiating relationships given a new breath of life, but also self-aware about the people who aspire towards the directions it takes the narrative, such as how middle class cis women might love the idea of something more unconventional without being able to deal with some of the realities of it (giving much more detail might be giving small spoilers, so I'll refrain). The ebbs and flows of the three main characters' relationships are fascinating to be drawn into, especially the connection with Katrina and Reese, and how Ames finds it difficult to navigate his own sense of getting someone pregnant amidst the murky waters of gender and trauma.

From even just the title, it's clear it's a book that is taking a bold approach to the age old stories of relationships and motherhood, and Peters does a great job of creating the right, wry tone to pull it off. There is something joyful, even through the issues and self-destruction you see in the characters, in the reading experience, and it might be at least in part just the sense of getting the kind of complicated break up literary novel but with biting trans comedy thrown in. It is refreshing and I hope for more contemporary literary fiction that can bring quite such a combination of spot-on references and commentary, cutting jokes, and emotional reckoning.