7 Of The Best Books Like Detransition, Baby By Torrey Peters

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“She knew that no matter how you self-identify ultimately, chances are that you succumb to becoming what the world treats you as.”

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If you’re looking for books like Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, you’re probably pulled toward messy, emotionally intelligent literary fiction that delves into gender, identity, and unconventional relationships with honesty and bite. In Detransition, Baby, three lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces Reese, Ames, and Katrina to confront what they want from motherhood, sex, and family. Reese has built a stable life as a trans woman in New York, but after he partner detransitions, she’s left alone. Ames, now living as a man again, is still tethered to Reese and searching for a new belonging. When pregnancy enters the picture, all three are led toward the possibility of an unconventional queer family. This bold, whipsmart debut novel has become a modern touchstone of trans literary fiction and queer fiction about identity and desire, making it a perfect launchpad for readers looking for similarly emotionally complex novels. 

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Detransition, Baby Summary

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in NYC, and a job she didn’t despise. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now, Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. 

Ames isn’t happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make his life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese – and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames’ boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she’s pregnant with his baby, Ames wonders if this is the chance he’s been waiting for. Could the three of them raise the baby together, cultivating something of an unconventional family? 

Nevada – Imogen Binnie

Kicking off our list of books like Detransition, Baby is Imogen Binnie’s classic queer novel, Nevada. Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City, whilst trying to stay true to her punk values. She’s in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin. She winds up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realises that she could become James’ saviour – or his downfall. 

One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalised life under capitalism. 

Little Fish – Casey Plett

In this extraordinary debut novel by Casey Plett, Wendy Reimer is a thirty-year-old trans woman who comes across evidence that her late grandfather – a devout Mennonite farmer – may have been transgender himself. At first, she dismisses this revelation, having other problems at hand, but as she and her friends struggle to cope with the challenges of their volatile lives, Wendy is drawn to the lost pieces of her grandfather’s life, becoming determined to unravel the mystery of his truth. 

Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish is a novel similar to Detransition, Baby that explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined. 

Fierce Femmes And Notorious Liars – Kai Cheng Thom

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is the highly sensational coming-of-age story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. 

Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, Dearly blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. When one of their number is brutally murdered, the protagonist joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles. However, when things go terribly wrong, she must find the truth within herself to stop the violence and discover what it really means to grow up and find your family. 

Luster – Raven Leilani

Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the one thing that means anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for the next hook-up. And then she meets Eric, a middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort of agreed to an open marriage, and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have anyone in her life to help her with her hair. 

As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else to go, Edie finds herself falling headfirst into Eric’s home and family. Like Detransition, Baby, Luster is a razor-sharp, surprisingly tender page-turner about what it means to be young now. 

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Check Out The Best Books Like Luster 

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Real Life – Brandon Taylor

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends – some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. 

But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspires to fracture his defences while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. Like Detransition, Baby, Real Life by Brandon Taylor is a novel of profound power, a story that asks if it’s ever possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost. 

Boys Weekend – Mattie Lubchanksky

Newly out trans artist’s assistant Sammie is invited to an old friend’s bachelor weekend in El Campo, a hedonistic wonderland of a city floating in the Atlantic Ocean’s international waters. Though they have not identified as a man for over a year, Sammie’s college buddies haven’t quite gotten the message. 

Arriving at the swanky hotel, Sammie immediately questions their decision to come. Bad enough they have to suffer through a torrent of passive-aggressive comments from the groom’s pals – all met with zero pushback from the supposed “nice guy” Adam. But also, they seem to be the only ones who’ve noticed the mysterious cult that’s also staying at the hotel, and is ritually dismembering guests and demanding fealty to their bloodthirsty god. 

Sorrowland – Rivers Solomon

Vern – seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised – flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. But, even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes. 

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troubling, the future – outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled, but also the violent history in America that produced it. Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals but whole nations.