Emma Noyes does it again. I loved Noye's debut Guy's Girl when I read it last year and this one blew me away. There is some heavy content here so be warned that it deals with a lot of grief and one of the most painful depictions of OCD I think I have read, but I felt like Noyes dealt with these subjects sensitively. This was tender and heartbreaking, and I just loved it.

This was really not what I was expecting. `I read and enjoyed Guy's Girl so I should have been prepared but somehow that cover made me think young summer romance. And while there is a young romance in this that is far from the focus. But trust me when I say, don't pick this one up for the romance as it takes a back seat to the family drama. But also that didn't let it stop me from rooting for Eliot and Manuel. They had such a strong bond and so much to work through but they were so worth rooting for.

Eliot's brother dies when she is young and she is not really equipped, or understands how to, deal with her feelings. It's about Eliot and the fallout over the years and her big dysfunctional family. Her Dad has had 3 wives and six kids and that is always going to make for some drama. Eliot also has OCD. Not the version everyone thinks of, but her brain works in a different way. Casting doubt and causing unusual thoughts. At first I was fascinated by this type of OCD I had never heard of, but at times in the story, it seemed to pop up and be a little out of place. If not for that this would have been a five star book for me.

I love when a book makes me think and this one did. A sibling death is hard at any age but when you are young, how do you cope and recover. Eliot is the youngest and her oldest brother was married when she was born, that sibling support isn't as strong as you might think.

My heart broke for the family as I read about their grief and how they handled it. That revelation at the end really made me pause and will make this one stick with me.

Emily Pike Stewart did a great job narrating this one and not only handling all the characters but brought Eliot and her struggles to life in such an unobtrusive way.

When Eliot has to go to Cradle Island for her older brother's wedding, it will be the first time in 3 years that she has been with her family and her best friend, Manuel. Ever since her brother, Henry, died when they were children, Eliot has The Worries, thoughts in her head that she can't quiet. It is a form of OCD, and she sees herself as damaged.
As the week of wedding festivities moves along, Eliot continues to avoid Manny, because she doesn't want to admit her true feelings and thoughts that convince her she is a bad person.
An interesting look at mental illness, in a unique way, and one that calls attention to OCD in a different way. The family dynamic is messy, but also loving in its own way.
I plan to read Noyes's first adult novel since I enjoyed this one.

This is a really interesting heart, wrenching, and sensitive book. The main protagonist Elliot has left her family for several years because of her OCD. She finds herself coming back for a family wedding and running into her best friend who she cut off. All of the familial relationships were intriguing and it was also interesting to see how Elliot started to realize that she’s not the only person who struggles with issues that everybody has their own version of personal problems that they deal with in order to move forward

Huge thank you @berkleypub and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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Eliot hasn’t returned home in three years. She loves her family but she needs to protect herself. She built careful walls around herself but it all threatens to come tumbling down when she comes face to face with Manuel. This is beautifully written about a challenging subject.

Thank you to Emma Noyes and @berkleypub @berkleyromance for providing an e-arc and to @prhaudio for providing an ALC of this book.

I LOVED THIS BOOK!!! 😍🩷 This book may very well be my favorite book of 2024. This book has everything: heart, humor and real life issues while also being a fictional story. Emma Noyes takes issues such as OCD, Anxiety and other Mental Health issues and turns it into a beautiful novel. Trust me: you will laugh and you will cry, rinse and repeat. I would say this book is written as a love letter to anyone who is struggling with mental health and as someone who is neurodivergent I felt seen in this book with my entire soul. I totally resonated with Eliot as a main character and many times throughout the book I wish I could go into the pages and give her a big hug. She was such a strong and amazing character and probably one of the characters I could relate to most.

On the audiobook side, I thought that Emily Park Stewart did an amazing job bringing Eliot and the other characters voices to life and I would definitely listen to more books by her in the future. She had a very comforting voice and help to immerse me in the story.

The only appropriate reaction to this book is to applaud Emma Noyes’s vulnerability in sharing her lived experience of OCD. As a reader, I could feel her stress and anxiety as Worries took over. I felt the impossibility of believing the kind things Eliot’s family and Manny said to her. I really appreciate, as well, that the ending wasn’t a nice, tidy resolution, which would’ve felt disingenuous. Another great read from Noyes, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

I am such a fan of Emma Noyes’ writing. I loved Guy’s Girl when I read it last year and I loved How to Hide in Plain Sight even more. Noyes’ characters are so fleshed out and well written that they really come to life on the page. I’m not somebody who struggles with OCD and I didn’t realize how varied the disorder can be for different people. At times it was hard being in Elliot’s head as we see just how much OCD takes control of her life. My heart broke for her as she isolated herself and struggled to live with her “worries” alone. Your heart will break for Elliot (I was on the verge of tears a few times), but Noyes will absolutely help put it back together. The love Manuel has for Elliot is so beautiful, and I love how in the end she finally sees that she’s worth loving.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for a review copy. 4.5 Stars

This book was okay, but not overly memorable. I probably wouldn't rave about it, but I don't have anything too bad to say about it either. A bit slow and very character driven. I did love the OCD representation as that is something I struggle with as well.

This book left me in tears - multiple times - and for multiple reasons. Sometimes I cried from laughing and other times I was heartbroken. As a mental health professional, I thought Emma Noyes did an excellent job of portraying the deep and often tumultuous emotions that come along with any mental health diagnosis. Overall, this was one of the most well-developed stories about family (albeit a dysfunctional one) and mental health that I’ve ever read, and I highly recommend it! If you've ever dealt with mental illness or loved someone who has, you'll feel seen in one way or another when you read Eliot's story. If you haven't been touched by mental health difficulties in some way, then this will absolutely give you greater insight into the emotions and hard work! that comes along with it. Thank you to NetGalley and Berkeley Publishing for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review,

3.5 ⭐️
I rounded down for GR because I’m not sure how willingly I’d recommend this one.

My review for this one is pretty middle of the road. While I do think the mental health aspect was as honest and vulnerable as it could be (author has OCD so you know it’s an accurate representation), however I do think she lost us a long the way trying to balance the main story of the wedding, her dysfunctional family, and balancing the dual timelines and romance aspect.

That was one sentence haha

This book is heavy. You are deep in Elliot’s OCD brain which is exhausting. When I face stories with the primary story being mental health issues, I love to see growth and progress. Unfortunately, Elliot is very much in the struggle and hiding stage and that was challenging for me. Not sure what would have given this book more stars for me, but I think we needed more hope at the end than what the author provided. It had glimpses of hope, but the ending wrapped up in the last few pages of the book. It was a bit unsatisfying after ending the book for 99% of heavy painful subject matter.

BUT- that may have been the authors point?? So who knows. Might look into an interview with the author to understand.

This is another great book from Emma Noyes! I loved Guy’s Girl, and this is equally emotionally poignant and readable. It is so hard to read about Eliot’s struggles with intrusive OCD, but I am so impressed by the author’s ability to show these experiences. The book had a great story to it which made it easier to read. I learned a lot, as I wasn’t familiar with this type of intrusive OCD. I would recommend this as an interesting and enjoyable read.

Thank you to the publisher - I received a complimentary eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fun fact about me: I’ve been living with Anxiety and OCD since I was a child. I was officially diagnosed at 8 years old after having panic attacks and OCD tendencies so intense I could barely make it through a day of school, and I’ve been dealing with it literally every single day since then. When I was young I remember wanting to someday write a book to show people what the inside of my head was like, and although I never ended up writing that book myself, HOW TO HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT does just that.

This book follows Eliot Beck. She’s been distant from her family for the last three years - living and working in NY and keeping her siblings, parents, and best friend at arms length. When she goes back to the Canadian island she grew up vacationing on to celebrate her brother’s wedding - she’s forced to confront the fact that maybe she isn’t as healed as she thought she was.

I related so deeply to Eliot and the thought spirals that she was so often trapped in that I had to take multiple breaks just to center myself and breathe. It was both difficult and incredibly validating to see someone like Eliot in the pages of a book.

If it wasn’t already clear, I absolutely loved this book and feel so connected to it.

Eliot Beck hasn't seen her family in 3 years. A long weekend at the families vacation home for her brother's wedding is going to push her to revist the past hurts and also confront her mental well-being,
or the fact that she's not functioning as well as she portrays. A very well written novel. It has all the makings of a great novel. It's emotional, complex, and authentic with real and flawed characters. Eliot struggles with an obsessive compulsive disorder, and through her narrative, we see the way the disorder can impact a person's thoughts. And for all these reasons, I give the novel 5 stars. But I didn't enjoy the novel and struggled to finish it. I think Emma Noyes is not the author for me. As I felt the same way about Guy's Girl. It's the being stuck in the main characters head for most of the book that makes it a slow journey, and I get bored. When I'm bored, I'm uninterested in the outcome. But alas.. I think others will absolutely love this novel, especially if you read and enjoyed Guy's Girl.

An arc provided by netgalley and the publisher was read and reviewed honestly. All opinions are my own.

After experiencing a traumatic incident when she was a child, Eliot Beck develops obsessive-compulsive disorder and flees from her family and best friend, Manuel, to Manhattan to throw herself into her work in an effort to escape her OCD thoughts and symptoms that she calls The Worries and spare her friends and family from associating with her. She is now returning home for her brother’s wedding and must confront her thoughts and the people she attempted to leave behind.

This book taught me so much about how differently disorders such as OCD can present. I had no idea that this type of OCD existed and I applaud Emma Noyes for using her own life experiences to write this fictional family drama and coming of age story with romantic aspects. It is heartbreaking to hear how consuming and self-degrading The Worries are and, while some of her actions and justifications did not make sense to me, I had a lot of empathy for Eliot because, as she explains, her OCD does not listen to logic. The character building and family dynamics were chaotic and entertaining and I loved the open discussions about finding help in therapy. The book did drag in a few parts but as I got closer to the end, I couldn’t put it down and was happy with the ending. I want to wrap Eliot (and Emma Noyes) up in a big hug and tell them everything will be okay. I am so glad she could not only learn to cope with her OCD and become an author, but also use her experience to write a novel to educate others on how it feels to live with it every day. Overall, this book was very heavy but I learned a lot and enjoyed it. I am glad I read it! Thank you to NetGalley, Berkley, and Emma Noyes for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.

After loving Guys Girl I was excited for Noyes' latest release. The story follows Eliot as she reunites with her loving but dysfunctional family for a wedding, but tries to keep her obsessive compulsive disorder buried. The story alternates between Eliot's thoughts in the past and present, helping see how she got where she is today.

The book is informative about OCD and I learned a lot, though I likely wouldn't categorize this in the romance genre. I appreciated Noyes' vulnerability as she shares her own experience with OCD, but parts of the story felt repetitive made the four-day wedding week drag on. I liked uncovering Eliot and Manuel's relationship over the years, but feel like the story was lacking some other character development and the ending was abrupt.

Meet one of my favorite books of the year 🫶🏻

Thank you @berkleypub for my #gifted copy.

Eliot is estranged from her family, but after three years, she decides to participate in one of her brother’s weddings. However, she isn’t expecting her childhood best friend, Manuel, to also be at the event. Now, the two are on Eliot’s family’s island for four days.

Told in alternating timelines, this book does an incredible job of capturing the relationship between Eliot and Manuel.

Noyes does a fantastic job of describing and depicting mental health (ocd). I haven’t really read a book that focuses on ocd, but I felt like I gained a deep appreciation for what the diagnosis means to people.

The romance is slow burn and is not the primary plot point, and I loved how we really got to know both characters.

I’m excited to read more of Noyes’ work and am hoping to pick up her previous book soon.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#litbylillireviews

This was a very interesting book with a strong focus on mental illness. It was a captivating read learning about Eliot. Eliot suffers from OCD. Shes heading home for a family wedding who she hasn’t shared her struggles with and she’s about to bump into her best friend from awhile ago. A very raw story worth reading. You have to check out the author’s note as well. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

**Many thanks to Berkley and Emma Noyes for an ARC of this book provided via NetGalley!**

Eliot Beck has been trapped in a constant battle...but you wouldn't know it by looking at her. Plagued by her worries for so many years, her OCD has kept her trapped in the confines of her own mind, held hostage by a constant barrage of anxious thoughts. Moving to New York City was her escape, and she gives her all to her copy writing job day in and day out, but it's hard to ignore the pangs of guilt and longing she feels for family and for friends from the past that she pushed away to keep herself feeling safe...especially in the wake of losing her brother, Henry, at an early age.

So when her older brother invites her and the whole wacky, family to his wedding in Canada, it's the reunion they all have been waiting for...but Eliot still feels a pit in her stomach that threatens to swallow her whole. After all, when she emerges from the safety of her metropolitan cocoon, she's also opening herself up to endless questions from her family and prying about all that has happened since she saw them last. Nothing could have prepared her, however, for the rush of emotion that follows when she arrives to see the one person who always really 'got' her standing there - her longtime best friend, Manuel, who she fell deeply in love with way back when. As much as Eliot wants to focus on the four days of wedding planning "fun" ahead, her emotions take hold and she can't help but want to let Manuel back in.

But when the worries take a more aggressive hold on her, Eliot starts to panic. Is Manuel able to TRULY be there for her now, after all the hurt she caused him by running away with no explanation? Will she be able to withstand the judgment, the questions, and cope with the struggles of her other family members? Or will the voices that tell her everything she does is wrong tell her once again to retreat, hide, and face her most terrible enemy - her mind - alone?

It's hard to imagine that Emma Noyes could have ANOTHER book tackling mental illness and disorders in such a frank and vulnerable way after last year's effort, Guy's Girl, up her sleeve...but here it is. Once again borne from personal experience, rather than a first hand account of living with an eating disorder, How to Hide in Plain Sight deals very specifically and very openly with another disorder - OCD. Noyes once again has lived with the disorder, and has become the norm, she writes from this very specific place of personal investment and extreme vulnerability to shed a light on a disorder that so many are familiar with to an extent, but also to debunk the severe misconceptions that go along with this general knowledge.

But while I once again applaud Noyes' bravery, honesty, and fearless writing in this effort, her heroine this time was a bit inaccessible amidst a sea of characters, a lackluster plot, and a book that clung to one or two points for dear life...and just would NOT let them go.

As much as I wanted to love Eliot Beck (aside from the distraction of her name, which had me CONSTANTLY thinking of Beck from the "YOU" series...not exactly what I wanted to be thinking about while reading this one!), unlike the MC of Guy's Girl who pulled me in right away, I had such a hard time connecting to her thought patterns and just her general struggles that I didn't feel like I had stepped into anyone else's shoes. The obvious comparison to John Green's Turtles All the Way Down kept coming to mind, since the book deals with another female protagonist and the SAME disorder...and I hate to say it this way because I think Noyes is a truly talented author, but Green just did it better. Eliot's fixation revolves for SO much of the book around her 'sexual attraction' to people she 'shouldn't' be attracted to (for one reason or another) and while this might be an incredibly accurate representation of OCD, it grew tiresome to read. As much as we spend the book in Eliot's head, I still didn't feel like I KNEW her the way I truly wanted to know her by the end of the book...and it was disappointing to feel that way.

There is another barrier to entry in terms of getting to KNOW Eliot fully...and this is the plethora of characters that exist in this one. As much as most of them are 'necessary' in the sense that they are family members, we don't really get to know any of THEM fully, either. With so many to attend to and describe throughout, it was hard to not chalk up many of them to 'basic' characterizations and traits rather than experiencing them as fully fleshed out, complex characters. I think there was all sorts of potential here - in this instance, despite the heftier page count, we just didn't get to go on a deep dive with any of these people...even Eliot's best friend, Manuel. As much as he was a supportive and incredible friend, most of what we learn about him is all through the lens of Eliot and much of it revolves around flashbacks and remembering the past. Although it may have seemed like this wouldn't work, I think some contrast via direct narration from Manuel would have helped to not only alleviate the constant, heavy thoughts of Eliot, but to have helped develop this character to 'match' the energy and intensity of our MC.

It was also hard to go on such a long and painful journey with Eliot and not get the sort of resolution I was expecting. Sure, there's an ending - the wedding happens and life continues - but I just wanted to have a clearer picture of what life was going to look like for Eliot afterwards. There isn't always room for an epilogue, but to go through this much strife, with intense conversations with family and Manuel, and to work through SO much trauma and yet feel 'stuck' in the same place was hard to reconcile as a reader. I understand this approach to an extent, because some of these battles can be life long and don't necessarily lend themselves to a happy ending, but whether the end result was going to be good or bad, I just wanted to know MORE to at least give these characters an ending in my mind, if not on the page.

But in the case that maybe it WAS just me, perhaps the answers to all of my lingering questions were simply hiding...in plain sight.

3.5 stars

Only two books I’ve read with such impeccable and honest OCD rep. Not the norm for OCD but the intrusive, repetitive thoughts, and the worries. This is one of them! I appreciated the storyline and love story too, Manuel <3 The big imperfect family. Everything felt so realistic in this story except how the there was some suspended belief with the family’s actions and how Eliot reacted for some things too.

The writing is so well done and had crazy takeaway quotes on life and learnings on OCD! In your mind! It can be a hard read in some cases, especially if your mind isn’t kind to you that day. But this book 🤍