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Twenty-one-year-old Eliot Beck loves her family but has avoided them for three years, instead focusing on building her life in Manhattan as a copy editor. She decides to attend her older brother’s wedding on the family’s private island in Canada, but when she arrives, she finds her childhood best friend, Manuel, waiting at the dock. She never expected to see him again, not after she abruptly cut off communication posthigh school. Manuel is practically family (as group chats prove), and he won’t take Eliot’s self-imposed isolation lying down. But Eliot thinks she has good reason to keep to herself: her intrusive thoughts, caused by her obsessive-compulsive disorder, have her convinced she is unworthy of love. Once again, Noyes (Guy’s Girl, 2023) sensitively portrays a heroine who is coming to terms with a mental illness and finally opening herself up to love. Flashbacks depict the onset of Eliot’s OCD and the masking techniques she used to keep the peace. Add this new-adult novel to the growing list of romances that explore neurodiversity.

Publishers Weekly
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After a three-year-absence, a young woman returns home and is confronted by her demons in this riveting new adult romance from Noyes (Guy’s Girl). Twenty-one-year-old-Eliot Beck returns to her family’s Ontario home for her brother’s wedding. After living in Manhattan for three years, copywriter Eliot believes she can handle being with her large and complicated family for a week without any issues. But within 24 hours of her arrival—and her reunion with her ex-best-friend, Manuel—Eliot’s reasons for leaving Ontario come rushing back to her and her OCD takes a turn for the worse. Eliot has spent years managing her “Worries,” the personification of her compulsive thoughts, which she thinks of as a living creature, and hiding them from the people she loves. Flashbacks tracing her friendship with Manuel from the summer before fifth grade to the summer before college and recounting how the death of her closest sibling, Henry, has shaped her life slowly reveal why she left town in the first place. The complicated dynamics between characters, especially Eliot and Manuel, are credibly developed, and give rise to some truly poignant moments. Noyes places readers firmly inside Eliot’s mind, making it easy to understand and empathize with her struggles. The result is an enlightening and gratifying contemporary. Agent Kimberley Whalen, Whalen Agency. (Sept.)