I inhaled this book. Anyone who has ever worked in a office will identify with Jolene and her struggle to cope with other people's passive aggression, poor hygiene, and smelly lunch choices. Her hilarious response to one incident lands her in trouble with HR, and so begins a punishment with unintended benefits and one of the sweetest should-be-enemies-to-lovers stories I have ever read. Cliff is the best. This book isn't really a romance, though. It's got trauma, bullies, complications, Iranian mammas, and plenty of laughs. I could not put it down, and Natalie Sue is an author to watch.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

A fantastic debut! I look forward to reading more from Natalie Sue

This book is the first book to have made me cry in ages! Not that it's all sad - this book also made me smile, with plenty of heart-warming and funny moments. It is a workplace comedy, and some of the things that happen in it are a little too ridiculous to be completely believable - but I think the exaggeration is sort of the point!

The characters in this book are great, especially the main character, Jolene. I found her relatable in some areas, with her worries about not wanting to be perceived and how other people might view her, but personally I didn't relate to her feelings of loneliness that precipitated her anxious thoughts, although that didn't stop me from loving her as a character. I think many people will find something relatable about Jolene: she's a second generation immigrant with Persian heritage living in Canada, she has social anxieties caused by bullying and other trauma from her childhood, she is frustrated often by her incompetent/lazy colleagues, and at the start of the novel she seems stuck in a rut without knowing what to do to get out. Jolene is flawed but sympathetic, and as a slightly socially anxious person myself, I can see how she manages to get stuck in some of the situations she finds herself in in the novel. The development she goes through during the book is lovely to read and happens without having an unrealistic happily-ever-after ending.

I love that all the other characters also have shit going on in their personal lives and are all fleshed-out complicated humans. We learn at the same time as Jolene that the people around her may not be exactly what they're trying to project outwards to the world. If you're thinking of picking up this book but have triggers to consider, then please check content warnings because there's quite a few for this book.

This is definitely going to be one of my favourites this year!

An excoriating dissection of an office environment in which hardly any work gets done while everyone is spying on, or ignoring, each other. Jolene is pulled up for writing invisible passive aggressive comments about her co- workers in her emails. An IT glitch means she has access to the whole office's emails and messages. She realises she can use this to her advantage, to keep her job.
We learn Jolene has never recovered from the death of a friend. She has no friends and lives in squalor. Gradually she starts to carve out a better existence and become a loyal team worker.
There are some amusing moments: the Iranian mothers trying to outdo each other, the employee who loses access to the shared drive but doesn't report it. I could done without boss Gregory's peccadillo.
Overall an enjoyable romp with a dark edge.

I thought this would be a lot funnier than it was, due to the way it was being marketed. It is, in fact, really quite heart-breaking and something that stayed with me well after I finished reading. It has it's comedic moments and is clever in parts too but mostly is a story of someone who is getting dragged under the tide of adulthood.

Thank you for my copy of this book to read and review.

I loved everything about this book. I thought it was original, relatable, funny, sad, heartwarming.

I have already recommended this book to friends.

A definite 5 star read from me.

Description:
Jolene's a socially anxious office worker with a flair for creative insults, an HR infraction, and, of late, access to every single one of her colleagues' emails and DMs. As she digs deeper into her irritating coworkers' dirty little secrets, she has to work harder and harder to keep her own under wraps.

Liked:
This book has such a juicy premise/hook, and it delivers. Of COURSE I want to know what Jolene's colleagues are furtively emailing each other about: it's basically wish-fulfilment by proxy ;) IHTFYW does an excellent job of both indulging that fantasy and making you feel very guilty about it. I found Jolene a believably flawed, mostly endearing protagonist, and could say the same for most of the other characters, too. I massively felt for her neglected little neighbour. Wasn't expecting this to make me feel as much as it did, if I'm honest!

Disliked:
The love interest is pretty one-dimensional and whilst I bought their connection, I found it too cheesy to be satisfying. A lot of the dialogue is genuinely witty, but there's a fair chunk which I don't think is up to par, and this can be grating when the novel itself seems to be fairly self-congratulatory about the quality of the banter.

Would recommend. Read if you like a bit of gossip but you also have the decency to feel bad about it ;)

Welcome to a new kind of corporate espionage in this darkly funny and tragically relatable tale of modern day working culture. From the very first page the social awkwardness was almost paralysing, cutting into those strange traditions and unspoken rules of the office that we follow but honestly make no sense.

We move through the dull monotonous rituals of office life and the stress of family, loneliness and adulting; going through the motions with Jolene as she appraises the world around her with a whip-smart humour and hilarious observations, sharing thoughts we’ve all had but never said out loud. She’s got a mischievous, playful streak that I fell in love with but also clearly has some trauma and tragedy from her past that’s trying to creep back in.

As Jolene finds herself getting pulled deeper into a web of spying and lies, it got intense; I felt the nerves and fear wondering if she’d get caught, if she’d taken it just a little too far but I just couldn’t stop reading. It had the high-stakes of a thriller, with a dash of absolutely swoon-worthy workplace romance, a generous helping of silliness and a lot of heart.

Now, I’m going to check my email settings while you add this book to your tbr.

I really enjoy books with an office setting, there is so much potential for interesting stories. I enjoyed getting to know Jolene and her colleagues.

There were some really funny moments but also some serious, poignant ones that really made me think. I think the balance was struck very well and made for an entertaining read.

I would recommend this book, especially to others who work in office settings.

It's bad enough working with an office full of people you don't like.

But it's arguably worse when, thanks to an IT cock-up, Jolene can see everyone else's emails and private messages.

But, with job cuts looming, is knowledge power?

📚 r e v i e w 📚
i hope this finds you well - natalie sue

if you work in an office, this book will be as familiar to you as the noise your computer makes when you turn it on in the mornings. for me it was so relatable it was uncomfortable at times but with this cast of characters, this office dynamic and with a frankly unhinged mc that seems to share more with me than just a surname, there was a lot for me to love with this book

here’s a brief low down:
office politics
lonely 30 something woman
funny, sad, thought provoking and full of substance.

i hope this finds you well is a character study and real proof that there is always something going on beneath the surface. it is also a lesson that capitalism is inherently evil and our jobs shouldn’t control our lives this much.

thanks to @netgalley for the early copy


.

I loved this book.

I thought it was going to be a lighthearted read about a girl who worked in an office, office gossip etc. But it was SO MUCH MORE! It delicately deals with mental health as well as love (familial, friends, romantic), loneliness, friendship, kindness and more. The author addresses all of these factors in an empathic and credible manner. Jolene, the protagonist, is perfectly credible. She comes across as cold and unfeeling, but inside, she's full of anxiety, she feels passion and she wants to be liked. As the story progresses, we see Jolene come out of herself and see the real person.

I liked the pace of the book, I really liked that the other characters are initially portrayed in a particular way, but eventually their real personalities are uncovered. I liked reading about how Jolene's relationship with Miley progressed through the storyline.

I really liked that the author properly ended the book; so many draw out the story and rush the ending.

I would definitely recommend "I Hope This Finds You Well", I have already suggested it to a number of my book-friends.

4.5 stars

Entertaining, funny and thought provoking, I Hope This Finds You Well was a delight to read; I wanted to do nothing but see how this mess of a story would unravel.

Jolene Smith has started working at Supershops Incorporated looking for a fresh start after a traumatic experience, but eight years later her situation is no better than before, and she just wants to survive. To cope with her intolerable coworkers, she starts adding snarky postscripts to her emails, changing the font to white so that they can't be read. Problems arise when she forgets to do so in an email to her work nemesis, who reports her to their supervisors, resulting in Jolene having to take weekly anti-harassment sessions and to allow her computer being monitored by HR. Due to an IT mix-up, however, she is granted administrative access instead, allowing her access to the office's internal communications.

This book gives so much more than the blurb promises, offering such a realistic representation of trauma, loneliness and how slow and bumpy the road to healing can be. Every character has a strong backstory that gets slowly discovered, proving that everyone has something going on behind closed doors; I really enjoyed how all of them had their "time to shine" through Jolene's eyes as she got to know them more. It perfectly balances humor with the more moving, serious moments, and I appreciate that a lot. To its core, it's a story about humanity and finding ways to forgive and move forward, and it is a story I will be thinking about for a long time.

Many thanks to HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction & Netgalley for allowing me an eARC in exchange for my honest review!

I Hope This Finds You Well is a sharp and hilarious representation of office cultures that we are all aware of. None of the characters are any bit likeable but it adds to the overall vibe of the book, the caricatures that might be slightly too close for comfort to those office characters we know in real life.
It was really entertaining and yes of course a lot of the moral decisions of the main character were questionable at best, it was a light giggle and thoroughly enjoyable.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review!

5 stars!

Oh wow! I JUST finished it, and I sobbed like most of the way through the second part. This seemed to have hit parts of me I wasn't even aware of. Jolene felt like a real person. She had flaws. She had a sense of being like a normal human, and that yanked me by the neck from the get-go, and I was rooting for her and Cliff the entire time. I did NOT expect to love this like I did. I didn't expect to get so invested in this story that I would simply break down from simple thing's they'd say. I didn't expect a romance either like I got, and I was so ready to throw my phone across the room at any moment that pissed me off.

I can not tell you how happy I am to have requested this. I NEED my mitts on a physical copy because I need to read this again and annotate the HECK out of it. I sound insane but wow, this was a funny, relatable, and surprising emotional ride for me, and I loved every second of it!

I really liked this and don't think I've read anything with a similar premise before. Relatable for literally anyone who works anywhere but especially if you're doing that office 9-5. Funny, moving and a super fast read. Recommend.

I Hope This Finds You Well mixes the most interesting aspects of The Office with its cast of weird and wonderful employees, with the social anxiety of the lead character from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Jolene hates her job, and hates her colleagues even more. All of them are soul suckling, effortlessly annoying individuals and the only pleasure she gets in life is sending emails to them with secret hateful addendums. However when her work nemesis Caitlin finds one of these messages and takes it to HR, Jolene is forced into an antiharrassment management course and her computer is set up for monitoring. Except a glitch makes it that Jolene can read everyone's emails and messages, and soon realises that there's more to the people she sits in an office with every day.

This story really is the definition of 'everyone has their own stuff going on'. On the surface Jolene colleagues all seem awful, selfish and sucking up to management. All except the sunshine that is Cliff, the new HR guy who's desperate to please everyone. But when Jolene looks deeper and starts engaging with those around er, she sees them all in a new light and begins go realise that the face people resent at work can be completely different from the face we have at home. I liked how all the characters around Jolene felt well developed - all of them had a life and a backstory that complimented Jolene's own journey. Caitlin was particularly interesting, as someone who comes off as deeply unlikeable and a bully, but underneath is incredibly insecure and beat down. I wouldn't say I grew to like her, but there was certainly a redemption of sorts.

I also really liked the inclusion of Jolene's family and her Persian roots. To see the love that her mother has for her, with all its criticisms, was a nice touch and added some much needed reality to Jolene's character. Same for Miley, who could coax the gentler side of Jolene from herself and stop her spending her weekends drinking into oblivion. I do wish we'd got a bit more time with Cliff and Jolene and exploring more of their relationship and the obvious tension created from feelings arsing between the two on the workplace. I think the author missed out on adding some great angst moments - but that's just a personal preference on my part.

A really good, character driven novel that explores work relationships, social anxiety induced by childhood traumas and the pressures of being second generation immigrants.

This book caught me off guard!
It made me laugh, it made me cry... it's truly incredible and the best book I've read so far this year.

I Hope This Finds You Well is described as an office comedy, and it is that, but so much more! This book centres around Jolene, an office worker who truly does not like her job and coworkers. She vents about this in postscripts she adds at the end of her work emails, turning the font to white so no one is the wiser. However, she forgets to change the colour of the font once and is punished with email restrictions by the very friendly and new HR guy, Cliff. Instead of restrictions, however, she ends up having access to everyone's inbox and instant messages and learns of all that is being said about her and what's going on behind the scenes at the office.

This novel was such an incredibly sensitive exploration of trauma, loneliness and new beginnings. It discusses that what people show us is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their whole lives. We never truly know what is going on with people. I Hope This Finds You Well also reminded me that life may seem dreary and difficult at times, but there are good people out there, even if it may not always look that way. This book is truly incredible and one that I see myself going back to, even though I don't have a habit of rereading novels.

Thank you so much to The Borough Press/HarperFiction/HarperCollins UK and NetGalley for this eARC!

I loved the cover of I Hope This Finds You Well on Netgalley which led me to be request it after seeing the comparison to the TV series The Office and Monica Heisey’s novel. I’m so pleased to say I enjoyed this book even more than I expected to.

I completely loved the main character, Jolene and this was a story that I couldn’t wait to get back to when I wasn’t reading it. The book manages to perfectly encapsulate the madness of working so close to people for years on end yet not necessarily knowing anything about their lives away from the office.

The loneliness felt by the characters is quietly devastating and I know comparisons to the TV series Fleabag get thrown around but this is probably one book where the comparison is justified as the main character doesn’t deal with the trauma of losing someone close to her.

At first I wasn’t sure how a whole novel could be sustained around the goings on of the office setting, but the different characters and their stories are nicely intertwined and you quickly become invested in their storylines and rooting for things to work out for them, particularly Jolene and Cliff.

A really wonderful debut by Natalie Sue which I think will be on my favourite books of the year list!

I really enjoyed this book and it had me hooked from the start. As soon as I saw the concept, I was super intrigued and had to request this immediately. As someone who has worked in an office for several years, the characters were so vivid and I could see issues that I see in real life reflected in this book. Overall, I really enjoyed this, I read it super quickly as I needed to know what happened and thought the pacing was great. There were some funny moments and I did feel for a lot of the characters, I think the author did a good job at character development. I wasn’t sure what way the author was going to take the book to the ending, but once you get to a certain point, the ending was actually a little predictable but it didn’t take away from the experience. I’ll definitely be recommending this to people and I can’t wait for everyone else to read it.

Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.