In How to Hide in Plain Sight, the author blends a tender love story with a nuanced exploration of mental health and family expectations. At its heart lies Eliot Beck—a protagonist who is sharp, guarded, and achingly human—as she steps back into a world she once ran from. What unfolds is a heartfelt journey through the messy, joyous, and sometimes suffocating web of family reunions, long-suppressed emotions, and unresolved love.

The setting—a four-day Canadian wedding extravaganza—serves as both pressure cooker and emotional playground. Eliot’s return home is a ticking clock laced with dread and longing, especially when she’s met by Manuel, her childhood best friend turned nearly-love. Their connection simmers with history, humor, and aching restraint, drawing readers into a will-they-won’t-they that feels both inevitable and deeply earned.

But what gives this story true resonance is its quiet, respectful portrayal of Eliot’s struggles with OCD. Her internal monologue—equal parts self-deprecating wit and raw vulnerability—offers a rare and powerful glimpse into the invisible labor of managing mental illness in a world that rarely pauses to notice.

How to Hide in Plain Sight doesn’t just tell a story of returning home—it explores what it means to be seen, truly seen, by the people who matter most. With warmth, complexity, and just enough romantic tension to make your heart ache, this novel is a beautifully crafted meditation on healing, connection, and the fragile courage it takes to let your guard down.

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How to Hide in Plain Sight is a tender, witty exploration of mental health, unresolved love, and the chaos of coming home. Set during a whirlwind wedding, Eliot Beck must face her loud, lovable family—and her best friend-turned-heartbreak, Manuel—without crumbling the walls she’s spent years building. It’s messy, moving, and impossible to put down.

This was a really hard read because it was so similar to my own experience, but it was also beautiful and poignant for those same reasons. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to be deeply moved by a family story, explore the realities and struggles of mental illness, and enjoy a slow burn love story along the way.

This was such a great read! I appreciated the mental health representation and how personal the story was to the author - I learned so much about OCD - it was truly eye-opening. I loved the author’s last book Guy’s Girl and now with this book she has solidified her spot on my favorite authors list! Highly recommend! 4⭐️

Family events are such fun--sometimes! Totally sucked me into the storyline and I enjoyed the read so much I forgot about everything else around me!

How to Hide in Plain Sight by Emma Noyes is a book that is on the harder side to define with this being partly a contemporary romance with a darker side to the topic making it more realistic fiction with a side of drama to it too. The main character in the story suffers from OCD and deals with her mental health along with dealing with her dysfunctional family so it’s not a sunny slice of romance.

Eliot Beck left her home and her family as soon as she could after high school fleeing to Manhattan where she didn’t feel as out of place among the sea of strangers as she did growing up in Canada. Eliot buried herself in her work and learned to cope with what she found out was OCD that had the thoughts in her head all wrong when she was younger.

Now three years after her departure Eliot is heading home after getting the invite to her brother’s wedding. Eliot vows that she can handle three days with her dysfunctional family and will quickly return to her safe haven in Manhattan once the wedding is over but Eliot didn’t realize her family had invited, Manuel, Eliot’s once best friend and the one person she regretted leaving behind.

How to Hide in Plain Sight by Emma Noyes is one of those books that while I wish I could rate it higher as I appreciated a lot of what the author did in the book I was left at rating this one three and half stars when it was said and done. The story is a heavy one overall but did have some more light hearted humor to it now and again as it dealt with OCD in a way I’d never read about before and I felt like I did learn a thing or two along the way. The problem though was this one felt that as long as the book was it didn’t feel finished in the end, like something was missing or needed to feel fully satisfied. While glad I’d read it I was just left wanting a bit more.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is a slow burn but an incredibly raw and vulnerable one--I could tell how personal Eliot's struggles with OCD are to Emma Noyes, and her reflections and intensive dive into her own thoughts are the strongest part of the book. The side characters and romance were not fleshed out as well, and the ending feels abrupt after such an emotional journey, but it's definitely worth a read.

I am a huge fan of Emma Noyes. She manages to write completely soul baring novels that deal with heavy themes in a really thoughtful, approachable manner. Eliot has been dealing with OCD and intrusive thoughts since the death of her brother in her early childhood. She has isolated herself from her family and best friend for three years but now will be gathering with them for her brother’s wedding.

This story really snuck its way into my heart. Eliot’s problems can feel so relatable at times and shockingly tragic at others. However my struggle with How to Hide in Plain Sight is that it’s hard to root for Eliot. She proves that you can empathize and sympathize with a character without truly liking them. Thank goodness for the supporting cast and the immersive lakeside setting which makes the story work so well. Manuel (I am obsessed with this fictional man) and Eliot’s family are all so layered and quirky. The family Olympics moments had me giggling through the tears.

The narration by Emily Pike Stewart is perfection. This is very much a coming of age story which covers a lot of ground and Stewart handles all stages of Eliot’s life with humor and care. She was fantastic.

For a story with depth and a lot of crazy family antics, check out How to Hide in Plain Sight by Emma Noyes!

The way Emma writes such hard topics so beautifully is one of my favorite things about her books.

Eliot is struggling with OCD and all the thoughts/feelings that comes with it. I was hurting for her so much in the book and her internal struggles. She’s a character that most people will have a hard time relating to and to me that’s the whole point. If you don’t struggle with OCD and these thoughts then you might not relate to her but you can learn about her. Learn what it’s like to be fighting battles you don’t have to fight.

Tbh I read this months ago and I still think about it regularly. I switched between audio and eyeball reading and the audio hit a little harder in moments. Hearing the struggles felt like someone was telling me their story personally.

Absolutely loved.

This is really tough to review. I think you just really need to be in the right frame of mind to read this one and I'm not sure I was. It's not light. It hits on a lot of hard issues- grief, OCD, to name a few. I will say it was definitely informative in that regard. But, it left me pretty drained by the end. The ending was also pretty abrupt and I would have preferred more closure after everything.

Well this was a pure delight that took me by surprise! Full of all the emotion, HOW TO HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT centers around Eliot Beck, who suffers from OCD after trauma of losing her brother in an accident when they were younger.

With themes of family dysfunction, addiction, and mental health, it was a much heavier read than I expected, but I loved how the characters felt so real, and the author used her own experience with OCD to bring awareness to how challenging it can be.

*many thanks to Berkley, PRH audio and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

Thank you to the publisher for my eARC!

Unfortunately this book was just not for me. While the writing was compelling and well constructed, the pacing and the story itself were boring beyond words. I did not connect with any of the characters or their stories, none of them stood out to me. At 75%, I felt nothing had really happened and none of the characters had developed much. I sped through the ending just to finish it because I had invested so much time at that point.

While I think the story may have had some promise, the execution fell flat. Do not think I will give this author another shot.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of How to Hide in Plain Sight by Emma Noyes!

Be prepared for a rather heavy read as we learn of Eliot's struggles with OCD and how her family can't relate to her. The way the OCD is covered in this story is very well done and I learned a lot about it. The complexity of her romantic relationship, her job, and how to tell her family of her struggles was well written. Be sure and read the author's end notes. 3.5 stars

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Format: Audio/E-book

4.5🌟 - I really liked it!

Thank you @berkleypub for the #gifted copy and @prhaudio for the complimentary audiobook!

I loved this! This felt like such an authentic and intrinsic look at someone with OCD! The authors note added a personal touch and made the story even more impactful! ❤️‍🩹

I loved the premise and setting of this book! This is a contemporary fiction but also had a strong love story component, dynamic and complex family relationships, as well as a deeply intimate and personal portrayal of OCD.

This was great on audio, and thought this was done truly beautifully!

Unfortunately I just couldn’t connect to the writing. It sounded really good and I wished it could’ve worked out but had to stop. Thank you to the publisher for my copy!

I thought because I don't have OCD, I wouldn't be able to connect with this book, but it was so far from the truth. Seeing Eliot's struggles from within in her head and how people reacted to her outwardly really helped with a general understanding of what she was going through. It made me sad to see her family brush off her illness and also not realize what was going on with her in general. I so appreciated her friendship with Manuel, even when she shut him out for years, he waited for her. It was truly a beautiful story and I loved that Eliot finally told her family and Manuel what she was going through.

Thank you to Emma also for being honest and giving us an OCD overview prior to starting the book!

Thank you netgalley for the arc.

Synopsis:
On the day she arrives in Canada for her older brother's wedding, Eliot Beck hasn't seen her family in three years. Eliot adores her big, wacky, dysfunctional collection of siblings and in-laws, but there's a reason she fled to Manhattan and buried herself in her work—and she’s not ready to share it with anyone. Not when speaking it aloud could send her back into the never-ending cycle of the obsessive-compulsive disorder that consumed her for years.

Eliot thinks she's prepared to survive the four-day-long wedding extravaganza—until she sees her best friend, Manuel, waiting for her at the marina and looking as handsome as ever. He was the person who, when they met as children, felt like finding the missing half of her soul. The person she tried so hard not to fall in love with… but did anyway.

Manuel's presence at the wedding threatens to undo the walls Eliot has built around herself. The fortress that keeps her okay. If she isn't careful, by the end of this wedding, the whole castle might come crumbling down.

My thoughts on this book is I really enjoyed it. I really like the OCD representation and how it was from the authors own struggles as well. I feel like people don't understand this mental illness as much as others. When it is talked about in a book I really enjoyed it.

I can almost guarantee that you haven’t read a book quite like this one.

How to Hide in Plain Sight is the second book I have read from Emma Noyes, and as I was so glad I picked up Guy’s Girl last year, I am happy to report that I also loved this one!

Emma is somehow able to weave together narratives that focus very heavily on living with and navigating mental health issues, in this case OCD, with touching romance subplots, and explorations of familial love and bonds.

It is really difficult to summarize my thoughts on this book because it is so unique. Eliot is a character who deeply loves her family, but in order to make their lives easier and “protect” them, she buries herself in her work and has very little communication with them for several years. She only comes back to the family home for the wedding of one of her siblings, which thrusts her back into the complicated dynamics of her family, and back into the orbit of her childhood best friend. The story is told in dual timelines, from Elliot’s childhood and present day. Elliot’s journey through grief at a young age, and how it plays into the present day narrative is heart wrenching and touching. The things left unsaid between Eliot and her best friend lays the foundation for the sweetest second chance romance among the chaos. And all the while, we see into Elliot’s struggles with OCD, and how it has impacted the course of her life.

As an oldest child I also found the insights into being the youngest child in a big family to be so interesting, and made me reflect on how my struggles as the oldest differ from those of my own youngest siblings. They aren’t worse or better, but they are different, and it made me see my own siblings’ experiences in a different light, and appreciate a different perspective.

I highly recommend this book! But it is NOT a fluffy romance, it deals with real issues. And it’s never perfect, but it is hopeful, and I found myself rooting so hard for Eliot and her family to find some peace and understanding.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group for access to this eARC. This title is out now, and I hope you add it to your TBR!

I was thrilled to get this book from Berkley, picked based on the wonderful cover! I loved seeing the raw and real description of someone living with OCD, something that is often NOT included in books. There were also amazingly wonderfuly complex family dynamics that lived throughout this book.

This is my first read by this author, but i'm curious for more. Thanks so much for the digital copy!

I always enjoy an Emma Noyes read, and How to Hide in Plain Sight was no difference. Really enjoyed the disability rep in this one; felt powerful and accurate, as someone with the same diagnosis.