TESSA TALKS BOOKS

The boy who couldn’t love and the girl who wouldn’t.

Ginny Murphy is a total guy’s girl. She’s always found friendships with boys easier to form and keep drama-free – as long as they don’t fall for her, and she doesn’t fall for them. She and her best guy friends have stuck to that. But then she meets Adrian Silvas, the only one who’s ever made her crave more, and Ginny begins to question her own rules.

Piece by piece, Ginny and Adrian begin to fall into something intoxicating, something dangerous. Ginny threatens to destroy the belief Adrian’s held ever since witnessing his own mother’s heartbreak: that love isn’t worth the risk. For Ginny, the stakes could be even higher. Letting Adrian get close could mean exposing a secret she’s long protected: her disordered eating.

Ginny isn’t looking to be saved by someone. But maybe she and Adrian can help each other – if they don’t destroy each other first.

Heartfelt and evocative, Guy’s Girl is a powerful story about true love, self-love, and growing up.

Emma Noyes told her mother she wanted to be an author when she was six. She grew up in a suburb outside Chicago and attended Harvard University, where she studied history & literature. She started her career at a beer company, but left because she wanted to write about mermaids and witches—eventually publishing her first YA fantasy series, The Sunken City. She now lives in Chicago with her Swedish boyfriend and miniature Pomeranian. Guy’s Girl is her adult debut. Learn more online at www.emmavrnoyes.com.

Ginny turns around to find Adrian in his doorframe, the door propped open with his shoulder. He smiles, pulling at his collar. 

​“Really?” she asks. 

​“Really.”

Her gaze lingers on the sharp length of Adrian’s jaw. His white t-shirt is cut with a low V, thin curls of chest hair peeking out. Dark hair still wet from the shower. 

For years, Ginny has had no interest in men. None. Finch was the last person she ever remembers actively wanting. She tried, in college: pick the cutest boy at the party, touch his arm, go back to his dorm. Once in his bed, she would do her best to rev herself up, to tell herself she was enjoying it. But when he finally pushed inside her, she was dry as sandpaper.

Every time, a dull, muted sadness unfurled in Ginny’s chest. She didn’t understand what was happening. She thought she wanted this boy, but now that she had him, she didn’t any longer. She didn’t want anything. She faked an orgasm. She draped herself over his torso and wore his body heat like a sweater until a dreamless sleep pulled her under.

Eventually, she stopped trying altogether. 

Ginny is broken. She knows it, but she can’t do anything about it. Her brokenness isn’t like a grammatical error or a bad subject line, which she can fix by writing and rewriting. Her brokenness is anxiety without cause, a weight on her chest as heavy as first snow. 

But when Ginny’s eyes travel over Adrian’s chest, over the dimples pressed into his cheeks, her heart flips suddenly, unexpectedly, in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time.

She clears her throat. “You have some of my favorite authors.”

“And, one day, you’ll be up there with them, Gin,” says Clay, raising his plastic cup.

Anthony and Finch yell, “Hear, hear!”

“You’re a writer?” 

Adrian’s question drifts over the merriment. When Ginny looks back at him, something has changed in his expression. It’s no longer detached, elsewhere. He looks genuinely interested in her answer.

Ginny pulls at the hem of her skirt. “Not really. I’ve never published anything.”

“Hey, now.” Clay leans over the back of the couch and pokes her in the side. “I read what you sent me right after you moved to Minnesota. Stuff was legit.”

And she’s still writing. Every single day. See, the thing about working a nine-to-five right out of college is that, after work, Ginny has five whole hours to fill before it’s acceptable to go to sleep. How am I supposed to live? she asked herself over and over during her first weeks in Minnesota. How am I supposed to fill my hours? What makes a proper adult?

She could’ve joined a club. Could’ve taken piano lessons. Could’ve gone out to a bar and tried to make friends. But, during the day, she eats so little and works so hard that, by sunset, she’s exhausted. She doesn’t have the energy to join a club, take piano lessons, or make friends. She’s sad and hungry and alone. 

​So, one evening, she opened her laptop and started to write. 

​She wrote without purpose. Whatever came to her—a fisherman in an Alaskan bay, a mother who goes for long walks beside old train tracks, a boy growing up near the Boundary Waters. She wrote about being sad and hungry and alone.

She hasn’t stopped writing since.

​She sent her first story to Clay, but not the rest. The rest are just for her. 

​What she likes about writing is that it captures her attention and fills the empty hours. It captures her emotions and fills her empty body. It takes her somewhere else. It lets her live, for just a moment, outside of a self she does not particularly like. 

“What about Sofra-Moreno?” Adrian asks. “Don’t you work in communications?” 

Ginny shrugs. “That’s for now. Not forever.” 

Though Adrian doesn’t ask any more questions, she feels the heat of his gaze linger. It makes her squirm. She drops back to the couch and checks her cards for the seventh time. 

Ginny doesn’t think of herself as cute. She doesn’t think of herself as quirky, or bubbly, or creative, or any of the other words people often use to describe her. In fact, she thinks of herself as little as possible—and only ever in terms of whether her waistline is expanding or not. To be frank, she would prefer that she not exist at all.

She only sees herself as desirable when her weight is below a certain number. Any higher, she believes, and her chin will double, her face inflate, and with it will go any sexual appeal she might hold. 

Yet Ginny doesn’t even want to have sex. With anyone. She hasn’t for years.  

Right? 

Her eyes flick to Adrian, then quickly back down to her cards. For the second time that night, she feels a clench low in her belly. The same place that used to squeeze whenever she looked at Finch.

Excerpted from Guy’s Girl by Emma Noyes Copyright © 2023 by Emma Noyes. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.