Isn’t It Obvious?

Rachel Runya Katz’s latest romp begins with one of the most quintessentially bisexual meet-cutes we’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Ravi, our MMC, was enjoying a commitment-free one-night-stand with Charlie (roommate of Yael, our FMC). Which is a chaotic enough origin story, but then Ravi tries to sneak out the window of an empty bedroom while Charlie is busy flipping post-coital pancakes (needy, much?)—except that the bedroom is not, in fact, empty, but occupied by a rather irritated Yael, who is busy tackling an acute hypomanic episode with an antipsychotics-induced nap and has been rudely awakened to find a full-on MAN crawling through her window.

What comes next is a whole bunch of charming, bookish drama and all-round wholesomeness. Yael is a high school librarian with a passion for social justice— she hosts a podcast that works through the classic high school reading list, serving hot takes on some of the more problematic mainstays of the canon. She also runs a queer book club, where Ravi starts volunteering (to her annoyance—she can’t forget the cursed window incident). What ensues is a mishmash of enemies-to-lovers and epistolary love story, with Yael and Ravi falling in love across two channels: IRL and over an anonymous (and surprisingly tender) email exchange.

More than anything, Isn’t It Obvious? is an ode to the power of books. Major shout-out to the Aardvark author crossover—Yael chooses a Chuck Tingle novel for her school’s queer book club, though she’s met with concern about the optics of spending money on an author who writes erotica (boo!). It’s a major book-about-books moment, with an emphasis on books that (like itself) are queer, neurodivergent, sex positive, and endlessly heart-warming.

3/5 open door.