Book Review: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

Jolene Smith has worked a soul-crushing job at the offices of Supershops Incorporated, a Walmart-like retail giant, for eight years. She suffers from pretty serious anxiety and therefore has done her best to avoid talking to her coworkers. As a result, they find her strange and talk about her behind her back, a fact she picks up on and which further feeds her anxiety. To cope, she has been adding snarkily hostile messages in white text at the bottom of some emails, effectively rendering it invisible to anyone who isn’t using dark mode. On the day we meet her, one of her recipients finally notices it and she is called in to a meeting where she is told that she will need to complete an HR course or face termination. Not wanting to lose her job, she agrees, and so is introduced to HR rep Cliff, with whom she finds herself feeling an immediate and unexpected attraction towards, and which he also seems to possibly reciprocate.

As a part of her punishment, software is installed on her computer to monitor her communications, but when Cliff does so he also mistakenly grants her access to everyone else’s messages, where she quickly sees that she was correct in her assumptions about what her officemates were thinking about her. After her initial shock and a botched attempt to tell Cliff about his error, she decides to use her access to her advantage and begins a campaign of getting people to like her. Of course, this means getting to know and starting to like them too, which leads Jolene to feel things about her fellow humans that she no longer felt herself capable of, with Cliff especially.

This is a romcom at its core, but it’s also so much more than that. Sure, Jolene’s snide commentary about office life is funny and the romance between herself and Cliff feels genuine enough to set most hearts aflutter, but what really stands out here is the author’s handling of anxiety. As someone who is very familiar with coping with it, much of what is presented in these pages rings very true, sometimes painfully so, and it makes this novel better than the average beach read.

There are some problems though, most notably that some character decisions seem a touch farfetched and even make it sometimes make it hard to root for people who would make them, though in the end they’re easy enough to overlook. Additionally, many of the side characters aren’t developed beyond their use as examples of the ways that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge one another because we usually can’t know what is really going on in anyone’s lives. It’s a good message, though it could have been nice to get to know these people a little bit more.

I Hope This Finds You Well is not without its flaws, but it’s still an engaging and enjoyable read, well-suited for the Summer season. With its blend of cutting comedy and heartfelt emotion with just a dash of suspense, most readers will find it hard to put down, even if they occasionally find themselves rolling their eyes. Surprisingly touching moments and astute observations about modern life elevate the material and make the book a good fit for book clubs as well. This one’s definitely worth forwarding. ★★★½