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After a meet-disaster, a podcaster and her producer fall in love over email without realizing they know (and hate) each other in real life.

Spice rating: 3/5 open door.

When high school librarian Yael’s secret podcast starts to take off, she decides to hire Kevin, a remote freelance editor/producer so she can manage juggling her mental health, day job, and the queer teen book club she’s been hosting at school after hours. To maintain her anonymity, they communicate strictly via email and Kevin only knows her by her podcast persona, Elle.

Little does Yael know that Kevin, who in real life goes by his middle name, Ravi, is the same man she tore apart for climbing out of her bedroom window after a one night stand with her roommate, Charlie. And she certainly never expects him to show up to volunteer at her book club.

In person, Yael and Ravi clash until their sparks turn into something more. Over email, Elle and Kevin are starting to fall hard when they decide to keep things strictly professional. But when Ravi discovers the truth, will keeping it a secret mean the end of everything he’s built with Yael/Elle? And what happens when she finds out? Will they fall twice as hard, or cut ties in more ways than one?

Rachel Runya Katz’s Isn’t It Obvious? is a sharp, funny romance about loving the whole person and finally taking a chance on love.

Don't just take our word for it...

“This kind of hidden identity story is my absolute favorite, and I am on my KNEES with gratitude that Katz wrote one just for me. I adored every toe-tingling moment…”
– Alicia Thompson, USA Today bestselling author of The Art of Catching Feelings

“Smart, sexy, and sincere… Yael and Kevin’s banter-filled interactions in person will have readers giggling and kicking their feet!”
– Samantha Markum, USA Today Bestselling Author of Love, Off the Record

Taste the very first page

Yael awakens in a haze. Her limbs, her tongue, her very being heavy with the kind of sleep that borders on coma.

This hasn’t happened in a while, and she forgot this part. How everything goes cloudy, and waking up seems to be a minutes-long process, each part of her brain stuttering on sequentially like a series of breakers being flipped. She hasn’t forgotten about hyperventilating on the phone to Sanaa yesterday, convinced she was going to lose her book club and her podcast. Which, of course, would make her lose her day job, too, because she knows she’d be entirely checked out already without her carefully curated hobbies. Her career would be over! She would never get a full night’s sleep again!

The olanzapine helps with some of the embarrassment, at least.

She had managed to wrap her hair before falling asleep this time, mercifully. When she finally wills herself out of bed and into a shower, she won’t spend forty-five minutes comb- ing out the beginnings of a loc formed at her crown. She sits up with an aggrieved sigh, her volume proportional to her effort.

A loud thunk echoes throughout the room. Probably her..

November 2025