Julia Rosenberg is the protagonist of Best Woman, a novel by Rose Dommu. She is a twenty-nine‑year‑old trans and bi woman living in New York City. She works as an assistant to an interior designer and shares an apartment with two roommates. She has a younger brother, Aiden Rosenberg, whose wedding she serves as maid of honor, and for whom she must return to her hometown of Boca Raton, Florida.
Julia describes herself physically as a pale‑skinned woman with freckles, broad shoulders, square hips, and thighs with cellulite. She has small breasts, a long neck, full lips, large eyes, and prominent collarbones. She considers her brown hair with bangs one of her most attractive features and mentions having undergone cosmetic procedures.
Her personality is defined by sarcasm, irony, and a constant self‑deprecating sense of humor. She is highly observant and, although she often projects confidence, she maintains a complex relationship with her transition — from her body image to the way she is perceived by others. Even while acknowledging the aspects of her body that don’t align with conventional beauty ideals, she demonstrates a significant degree of self‑acceptance and strives to build an identity on her own terms.
Julia explicitly identifies as bi from adolescence. For her, it is important to name herself correctly and to challenge the idea that bisexuality is just a phase or a confusion.
Kim Cameron represents one of Julia’s first romantic interests. Thirteen years before the main events of the novel, we see how Julia becomes deeply captivated by her and describes her with constant admiration, even thinking:
She is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
The novel also makes clear her attraction to other genders. When reflecting on her romantic and sexual preferences, she distinguishes the traits that draw her to each:
With men, I tend to favor skinny skater boys with tattoo sleeves, thick black glasses, and stupidly big dicks. With women, I go for girls who smell like patchouli, have at one point in their lives owned a wall tapestry from Urban Outfitters…
Julia appears during Aiden’s wedding, when Ben Otsuka jokes that he would like to win over Rabbi Hoffman. Julia responds, laughing:
He was an extremely integral part of my bisexual awakening!
By recalling that stage with humor and without shame, the protagonist presents her bi awakening as an essential part of her life story.
Julia Rosenberg stands out as an uncommon representation of a trans bi woman whose sexual orientation is never questioned or presented as a “conflict” to be resolved. The novel acknowledges the stereotypes associated with bisexuality, but it also allows Julia to be contradictory, imperfect, and emotionally chaotic without turning those traits into consequences of her orientation. At the same time, her bisexuality significantly influences her emotional life and the structure of the story, making her one of the few contemporary trans bi characters whose identity occupies a central place within a romantic comedy. This combination makes Julia a particularly relevant representation within LGBT fiction, as it expands the diversity of bi protagonists in recent literature.