Review of ​Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

​Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters is a novel about a trans woman, Reese, a once trans woman, Ames (Amy), and Katrina discussing and prepping to have a child together. Reese and Ames used to date when Ames had once been Amy, a trans woman. However, when Reese begins to secretly date a married man, Stanley, and Amy finds out, their relationship turns sour. This creates a rift in their relationship, and is one of the suspicions Reese has of Amy’s detransition: that Amy was scared not of being a woman, but of how others saw her. Ames then comes back into Reese’s life after he gets his boss pregnant and isn’t up to being a parent, so decides to enlist Reese, who really wants to be a mother, in raising Katrina’s child. As they get to know each other, Katrina invites Reese to an essential oil party where Katrina reveals to her friends that she’s pregnant and Reese reveals that she’s trans. Then, at a dinner later that day, they are at a restaurant when a man Reese recognizes, her boyfriend, arrives to the dinner as the husband to one of Katrina’s friends. This causes Katrina to truly question Reese as a person, and whether she would be fit to be included in her family. Eventually, after an angry email, and a walk into the frigid ocean, Reese tries to convince Katrina to keep the child, though Katrina is already at this point apprehensive. Though, the novel ends at this moment before the abortion appointment, with the rest of what happens being implied.
 
I really liked the frankness of the novel as well as the way Peters weaves in the past and present. It feels as though I’m getting a close look at the intricacies of queer relationships, how people view them, and what it means to be a person. Peters shows her characters, not as the quintessentially perfect queers some media tends to do, but as people who make mistakes and have to owe up to their actions. It’s a beautiful rendition of what it means to desire motherhood, exist as trans, and what people will do to fight for created families.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5