Author Emma Noyes's Adult Debut "Guy's Girl" Is A Self-Love Story
Trigger warning: Eating Disorders
Growing up, I was a guy’s girl.
Yes, I had my best and closest girlfriends (you know who you are), but in school, I mostly hung around with the guys in my classes. This was, at least partially, because I’d been burned by a lot of girls. Guys didn’t come with drama (for the most part). However, I’d been a guy’s girl forever. According to my mom, as a kid, I always gravitated towards my uncles and boy cousins at parties. I still do.
It was no different in college. My friend group was predominantly male. There were eight that stayed consistently close throughout our four years together. I even ended up marrying one of them.
So when I was approached by Penguin Berkley about author Emma Noyes's adult debut, Guy’s Girl — a coming-of-age story following Ginny Murphy (a self-proclaimed guy’s girl navigating adulthood and toxic relationships while battling an eating disorder) and Adrian Silvas (the quiet one in Ginny’s friend group secretly battling his own darkness) — I could not wait to get my hands on a copy.
Emma Noyes is a Chicago native, a Harvard graduate, and the YA fantasy novelist behind The Sunken City trilogy. Stepping out of the magical realm, Noyes penned Guy’s Girl, an adult novel in which protagonist Ginny Murphy joins her college best friends in New York City to pursue a new life.
But Ginny has a secret: An all-consuming eating disorder and recovery seems out of reach. When she crosses paths with Adrian Silvas — the aloof one of her friend group that she’d never quite clicked with in college — she suddenly finds herself craving more than just a platonic friendship.
And Adrian sees Ginny. Really sees her, but as Ginny falls harder and faster, Adrian pulls himself further away, afraid that she could be the one to disprove his belief that love is never, ever worth the risk. It’s this disconnect that sends them both spiraling, but it’s also their magnetic pull toward one another that helps them both heal.
I loved Guy’s Girl from start to finish. I connected with Ginny’s story on so many levels, that it almost felt eerie to read. I struggled similarly to how Ginny struggled. I fell for the quiet one in my friend group. He helped me on my journey toward recovery.
I do want to preface that there is some graphic imagery of disordered eating behaviors in this book, so consider this your trigger warning. That said, Guy’s Girl is an excellent representation of what it is to struggle with an eating disorder. The thoughts that run through your mind, the physical aches and pains.
It is also so much more than a love story between two people. It’s a story about self-acceptance, self-love, and letting love in. I highly recommend picking up a copy. In the meantime, check out my conversation with Noyes below. We discuss the book’s hard-hitting themes, and the inspiration behind the characters, and get a behind-the-scenes look at Noyes’s writing routine.
On Guy’s Girl
What inspired you to write Guy’s Girl? Did you have an “ah-ha” moment in which the plot and characters came to you?
EN: I don’t think there was one “ah-ha” moment with this book. I got into eating disorder recovery in 2020 and immediately began journaling about my experience. Many of those journal entries made it into the final book. But I didn’t start working on the specific characters of Ginny and Adrian until a full year later.
Oftentimes, writers create characters they see themselves in. In what ways are you similar to Ginny? In what ways are you different?
EN: Ginny is me, but she’s me at a very specific phase of life. The Emma of 2020, who was incredibly deep in her disease and lost for a way out. I am not that girl anymore—and for that, I am eternally grateful—but I know that she will live within me forever.
I loved the main cast of guys in this story. I thought you did a great job differentiating one personality from the others. Can you tell us about each character from the main cast’s development? How did they come to you and what was it like deciding what roles they would play in Ginny’s world?
EN: I know they don’t get as much airtime as Ginny and Adrian, but Clay, Tristan, Finch, and Heather are all crucial pieces of the story. Off the bat, I knew I wanted readers to love Clay and Tristan, who provide much of the comedic relief in such a difficult read. Finch, of course, is the antagonist and a general asshole, but he provides an important contrast to the other male characters. And Heather… well, Heather is basically my real older sister Skatie, who was the first person to really shove me into recovery.
How did you go about developing Ginny’s budding love story with Adrian? What did he offer her versus what the other boys in her circle offered?
EN: First and most obviously, he offered a degree of distance from her closest friends. He’s part of their circle, but not so engrained that, were things to blow up between them (as they did on multiple occasions), Ginny would have to worry about losing her best friends to awkwardness.
Ginny is battling an eating disorder. How did you approach writing such a sensitive subject matter?
EN: All of the eating disorder stuff is first-hand experience, sometimes even just writing out, word for word, the thoughts churning through my mind.
Two female connections make a profound difference in Ginny’s recovery - her sister and Eszter. What was the message you wanted to send readers on the importance of female relationships, especially in times of hardship?
EN: A big part of Guy’s Girl—and why I chose that title for the book—is Ginny’s relationship to womanhood. Growing up, I loved being called a guy’s girl. I loved that I thought it made me “chiller” than “all those other girls,” a diamond buried in the muck. In some ways, I feel like the eating disorders that I developed were an off-shoot of that belief. I mean, starvation literally takes away your womanhood. Your breasts, your hips, your period… all the things that are unique to women and that enable us to carry children, gone. As I’ve recovered, even though I still have many male friends, I cherish my female friendships more and more. I don’t want to reject my womanhood; I want to be proud of it.
In addition to Ginny’s eating disorder, there are a lot of important conversations being had in this book around mental health, anxiety, toxic relationships, and loss. Why was it important to you to explore these sensitive topics in this story, specifically?
EN: I don’t choose topics before writing a novel. Instead, I choose a story or a theme and just see what comes out. What ends up being important. I love this method because it usually allows me to write about whatever is most pressing on my mind. The story is my vehicle for getting those thoughts out into the world.
What do you hope readers take from this novel?
EN: Eating disorders are not about being skinny. They’re not about having the “perfect” body, nor do they indicate that you are a shallow person. They’re about numbing yourself to avoid pain, mental disorders, past trauma, etc, and those of us who experience them deserve to be understood.
On Writing
Do you consider yourself a pantser or a plotter? How do you go about starting a project?
EN: I just had to look up pantser. LOL. I’ve never heard that term before, but it describes my writing style perfectly! I once had a teacher who said, “The best stories don’t begin with a message, lesson, or theme in mind. The best stories start with a character who has a specific motivation, and then they grow from there.” I’ve tried to stick true to that advice in my writing ever since.
Paint us a picture of what a day in the writing life of Emma Noyes looks like.
EN: Wake up. Cuddle my dog in bed. Roll out, and put on a giant sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers. Make breakfast. Eat breakfast. Make coffee. Bring a cup to my desk and write for two hours. Have an existential crisis around 10:30 a.m. Lunch. More writing. Get really excited when my fiancé comes home from work. Dinner. Mindless TV, especially The Vampire Diaries.
Rinse and repeat!
What is your editing process like?
EN: For me, editing often takes almost as long as writing, if not longer. I do full overhauls of the book, adding entirely new scenes based on what I think the story needs and taking out the things I don’t.
What are 3 of your must-haves to set the tone for a writing session?
EN: A comfy chair, lots of candles, and my gigantic water bottle.
What is the best advice you can give writers battling a bout of writer’s block?
EN: Oh, goodness. To be honest, I haven’t had much writer’s block in the past, but I’m having a pretty bad bout right now. Must be the post-book release excitement waning! So far, the best techniques that help me are reading other books for inspiration and loooooong walks to think about plot.
Lastly, if you could pull an Alice in Wonderland, but instead of stepping through a looking glass, you can step into a book, which would it be, and what role would you play in the plot?
I would take Elena Gilbert’s place in The Vampire Diaries so that I could have Stefan and Damon Salvatore fighting over me. LOL.