The premise of Torrey Peter’s debut novel, Detransition, Baby, is nearly irresistible: Ames, a trans woman who has returned to living as a man owing to difficult life circumstances (not, as current right-wing discourse would frame it, because the original transition had been a mistake), has accidentally gotten his lover Katrina pregnant. Overwhelmed by the idea of fatherhood and the very cis social role that entails, Ames goes to his ex-partner, the trans woman Reese, and asks her if she would become second mother to his child. 

Will Reese accept? How will Katrina react to this unconventional proposition? Why did Ames detransition in the first place? 

The resulting story is extremely engaging, at times heartbreaking, and consistently hilarious. Peters portrays the lives of both trans and cis women in vivid, intimate detail, while telling a story so well paced, and so full of wry humor, that the pages fly by.

Highly recommended!