Read an Excerpt from THE BODY RIDDLE, the Spellbinding Debut Novel by Sam K MacKinnon

Change doesn't follow a straight line in The Body Riddle (House of Anansi Press), the impressive debut novel by Sam K MacKinnon. Instead, it creates new questions, reshapes old relationships, and challenges assumptions about identity, love, and desire.

When Lex undergoes gender-affirming chest surgery, they expect life to move forward. Instead, the experience unsettles their sense of self and their relationship with their longtime partner, Ada. As the couple navigate jealousy, non-monogamy, shifting attraction, and new romantic possibilities, the story focuses on emotional complexities rather than easy answers. Lex's growing connection with a nonbinary coworker only deepens their uncertainty about who they are becoming and what they truly want.

Thoughtful, emotionally honest, and deeply character-driven, The Body Riddle explores what happens when personal transformation reaches far beyond the body itself. MacKinnon approaches questions of gender, intimacy, and self-discovery with empathy and nuance, delivering a novel that is as much about rebuilding a life as it is about redefining one.

We've got a captivating excerpt from this new novel to share with our readers right here!

An Excerpt from THE BODY RIDDLE by Sam K MacKinnon:

I was scrolling through post-op chest surgery photos on my laptop when I heard the crunch of Ada’s key in the apartment door, then the unmistakable thud of her sneaker kicking a cardboard box. A gritty swoosh as the box slid across our entryway floor. Another delivery. I sat up, which took some effort, as I’d been lying upside down on the couch with my head on the seat cushion, legs splayed over the arm. I shifted my chest under my binder, adjusted my T-shirt. Exited transbucket.com and hastily clicked the bookmark to my portfolio site.

“Hi, honey love,” Ada said, kissing my cheek and tossing a box on the coffee table. The box looked the same as all the others. Plain, unbranded packaging; nondescript sender label, addressed to Ada. I didn’t need to open it to know whatever was inside wouldn’t help us.

“You should stop spending your money,” I said. “I can’t think about sex when I’m about to mutilate my body.”

Ada rolled her eyes. I was being facetious—surely she knew that—but privately, I saw the truth in the word mutilate. It didn’t matter that it was one cis people used to refer to our surgeries. I was chopping off a body part, after all.

I could no longer bear to see the hope in the upward angle of Ada’s eyebrows as she slid scissors through packing tape, gently pulling aside the cardboard flaps as if what lay within was the long-awaited antidote to our sex problem. The last time we’d had sex was more than a year ago. Two since we’d fucked with any semblance of regularity. Our once-scorching flame was now a wisp of smoke.

A natural problem-solver, Ada had taken to purchasing sex toys and gender gear online: packers, realistic dildos, non-realistic harness-free dildos, and new binders from trans-owned companies in the States, which always took weeks to arrive and came with import fees Ada waved away when I read the receipts with a grimace. She saw each purchase as a hopeful solution, a match that would reignite the fervid, animalistic desire I once had for her body.

“I have a good salary,” Ada said. As if I had forgotten her riches. “And I got a bonus this month for the wet mop campaign. Don’t worry about it.”

I sighed. Ada worked in marketing at a firm downtown, preparing pitch decks for cleaning companies and dentist offices and other wealthy clientele. I was a freelance illustrator, but mostly I was unemployed. If I had a project on the go, I considered myself lucky. Ada and I used to split expenses fifty-fifty, but after the fiasco that was my last restaurant job, we had worked out an arrangement where Ada paid for the rent, groceries, poke bowl deliveries, internet, various media streaming services, Christmas gifts, and inevitable parking tickets when I borrowed her car, and I paid for my phone—which is to say, I was effectively Ada’s dependent. This bothered me more than it did her.

She knelt in front of me, grabbed my wrists, and held them in her hands like I was her child. “I just want you to be happy, Lex. Whatever we don’t use now we’ll save for after the surgery. When you’re happier and more comfortable in your body.”

She spoke with the confidence of an oracle; the concept of “after,” in her mind, a fixed endpoint to my enduring embarrassment of my chest. She was so hopeful, so assured in her conviction that once I got cut, once I removed my two wobbly balls of fat, my life would change for the better. I would be free. Sex would happen. Ada would resume her elaborate ritual of tying me to the bed, becoming the owner of my breathing patterns, sliding on her black nitrile gloves and disappearing her fist inside me. I ached to resume my submission, or rather, I wanted to want to, but knew that, at least for now, it was impossible. I thought about sex obsessively, but less as an unfulfilled desire and more a rumination on my frustration that I was incapable of having it, overwhelmed by the vulnerability it necessitated. But I was desperate to believe in Ada’s foresight. Desperate to believe our sexual relationship was salvageable.

So, I swallowed my rebuttals.

Besides, what did I know about “after,” myself? I wasn’t convinced I was truly trans. I sometimes felt that I wanted to be trans, but I didn’t know if that was the same thing as being trans.

I had sought out surgery on only a hunch that it might change my life for the better, just as it seemed to have done for the people at trans group and the hot transmasc Instagram models I ached to emulate.

I opened the box and pulled out a dildo, its tip striped baby blue, pink, and white. “You got me a trans flag dildo?”

“Isn’t it fun?”

I frowned. Even in sex, we could not escape self-advocacy.

I examined its girth. “Fun enough to strap it to my backpack.”

Ada furrowed her brow, a slight smile forming on her lips. “Your backpack?”

I wagged the silicone dong back and forth. “How else will I fight for trans rights?”

The Body Riddle. Copyright © 2026 by Sam K MacKinnon. Published by House of Anansi Press.

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Sam K MacKinnon is a queer, trans writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Their writing has been published in Catapult, Prairie Fire, CBC, Them, and elsewhere. Sam was nominated for the John Hirsch Emerging Manitoba Writer Award in 2022.