Some books land on your shelf quietly, and others burst through the door like a friend who refuses to be ignored. Rhyannon Styles’ memoir New Girl: A Trans Girl Tells It Like It Is belongs firmly in the latter camp. Raw, funny, devastating, and profoundly uplifting, this book has become one of the most talked-about transgender memoirs in recent years. To put it simply: Rhyannon Styles is to transgender storytelling what Matt Haig has been to conversations about mental health, a voice that connects, resonates, and refuses to sugarcoat.
Imagine living decades feeling trapped in a body that doesn’t reflect who you are. Imagine performing masculinity like a daily costume, all while knowing it’s an ill-fitting disguise.
For Rhyannon, born Ryan, this wasn’t imagination, it was reality. Years of denial, depression, and desperate coping strategies eventually led to one stark choice: die as a man, or live as a woman.
In 2012, at the age of thirty, Ryan became Rhyannon. It was not a sudden transformation but the beginning of an arduous journey marked by hormone therapy, surgeries, mental health battles, and a profound emotional rebirth. New Girl captures this metamorphosis with startling honesty, pulling the reader into the highs and lows of transition without sparing the gritty details.
What makes Rhyannon’s memoir exceptional is its vibrancy. Yes, it is a book about gender transition, but it is equally about creativity, survival, and the sheer messiness of being human. With a background steeped in performance, cabaret drag acts, Parisian clown school, experimental dance, and even roller-skating nude at the Barbican, Rhyannon’s life reads like a kaleidoscope of artistic exploration.
Her pages are filled with unexpected detours: dancing alongside Kylie Minogue on ITV, performing at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and eventually finding grounding in sound meditation practices like gong baths in Berlin. There are brushes with fame, nights lost to addiction, and mornings scarred by depression. And yet, through every catastrophic low and euphoric high, there is always the undercurrent of courage, the determination to live authentically, no matter the cost.
We live in a time when the world is slowly waking up to the lives of transgender people. Representation is expanding, but misconceptions, hostility, and political battles remain rife.In this landscape, New Girl is both timely and timeless. It strips away the sensationalism often attached to trans narratives and replaces it with humanity. Rhyannon’s voice is unflinching, humorous, and intimate, inviting readers not just to observe but to empathize.
She describes transition not as a single act of bravery but as a series of choices, struggles, and revelations. Her story underscores that being trans is not only about gender, but about survival, creativity, and ultimately joy. For anyone who has ever felt lost, silenced, or out of place, her words ring with hope.
While New Girl stands as her landmark memoir, Rhyannon Styles is more than just a writer.
Her artistry moves fluidly between mediums, theatre, dance, music, sound, and fashion. With an MA in Solo Dance Authorship from Universität der Künste Berlin and training at École Philippe Gaulier in Paris, she draws from a deep well of physical theatre and performance traditions.
In recent years, she has expanded her practice into writing beyond memoir. Her second book, Help! I’m Addicted: A Trans Girl’s Self-Discovery and Recovery, explores addiction and healing with the same candor that defines New Girl. She has written essays and columns for ELLE UK, i-D, Vice, The Berliner, and Sunday Times Style, giving her distinctive voice to cultural conversations about gender, creativity, and lived experience.
Her artistry also embraces collaboration and reinvention. From leading sound meditation sessions in Berlin, to co-founding the dance-punk band Objet Darling in 2023, to appearing in major advertising campaigns for Nike, Zalando, and The Body Shop, Rhyannon refuses to be confined by a single label. She is a storyteller in every form, whether through words, movement, or sound.
At its heart, New Girl is more than a memoir; it is a manifesto for authenticity. It shows us that life is not about neat arcs of triumph but about embracing contradiction, failure, laughter, heartbreak, and love. Rhyannon’s willingness to put her story on the page, in all its painful and joyful detail, is itself an act of generosity.
Readers come away not only with a deeper understanding of what it means to transition, but also with a renewed appreciation for what it means to be human. Vulnerability and resilience are threaded through every chapter, reminding us that while our stories may differ, the longing to live truthfully is universal.
New Girl: A Trans Girl Tells It Like It Is is one of those books that lingers. It challenges, it comforts, and it provokes reflection. For trans readers, it is a mirror; for cis readers, it is a window. But for everyone, it is a celebration of life lived boldly.
Rhyannon Styles has given us a memoir that will be remembered not only for its groundbreaking portrayal of transgender experience but also for its artistry, wit, and humanity. Much like Matt Haig did for mental health, Rhyannon has reframed the narrative, making the personal universal, and the painful profoundly beautiful.
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