⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I hope this finds you well by Natalie Sue

Jolene works in admin for Supershops Inc. She detests most of her colleagues and prefers to keep herself to herself. After sending one of her secret messages in an email where she usually changes the font to white but this time forgot she is reprimanded and now has to take a compulsory training course led by the hot new HR guy Cliff.

When she realises that a mix-up in IT means she can see into every staff member's private emails and DM’s she decides to use it to her advantage, for revenge and to get ahead in the company. However, what she doesn’t bargain for is seeing the real people with real struggles behind the colleagues she has hated and surprisingly starts taking a liking to them, especially Cliff whom she starts to fall for badly.

This is a hilarious story of office politics and the things we do to get ahead. The characters are all loveable in their own way, even the not-so-nice ones and I loved the whole concept of seeing into the world of your co-workers without them knowing, the secrets you would discover and then using them to your advantage. It’s just genius.

I couldn’t believe this was a debut as it was so well written with just the right balance of love and revenge all wrapped up in such a compelling narration. It was sometimes dark and sad then it would be funny, delightful and hopeful. There were also some lovely heartwarming tender moments. I am very excited to see what this author writes next.

Thank you to @netgallley for a digital ARC of this book

Do you ever remember when you were younger and you played that game where someone asked you what superpower you would want if you could choose anything? Most people said invisibility, invincibility, the ability to fly.....but I always wanted to ability to read people's minds and know their innermost thoughts (not quite sure what that says about me).

In I Hope This Finds You Well, Jolene Smith (did anyone just read that name in a Dolly-esque voice? Admit it, you did, didn't you?) finds herself in that very position. Working a dead-end admin job in a company she hates, Jolene learns that redundancies are coming. She is also disciplined for an email she sent to a fellow worker which means that her email account is restricted. All this sounds like the death knell for her job, however in restricting her account an I.T glitch has meant that Jolene can now read all her colleagues emails. Surely she can use this to her advantage and save her job.

Working in an office, this premise drew me in immediately. It's the stuff of nightmares for someone to have access to your emails and this sounded like it would be a real laugh. And it was, but it was also much more than that.

Although there are some incredibly funny moments that most of us who work in this environment will relate to, this book also deals with trauma, death, guilt, domestic violence, parental relationships and much more. It is funny but also incredibly moving.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | The Borough Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I've had a bit of a reading drought lately where nothing seems to really touch the spot. I'm so glad that I picked this up as it was exactly the tonic I needed. Great fun.

It's Jolene's 33rd birthday and she's dreading the 'morale boosting' getogether that her office is arranging. She feels herself invisible in the company and gets revenge by sending emails with insults in them to her colleagues. except she white-outs the nasty bits. But there's no party for Jolene, instead she's interviewed by management because of course, she's accidentally sent an email without blocking it out. Disciplinary measures follow. She has to follow a course and her emails will be monitored. But something goes wrong and she finds she has access to everyone's emails. And what she reads there is deeply upsetting.

This is a terrific novel about social anxiety and what it can do to us. I really enjoyed the characterisation throughout. Jolene is messed up through no fault of her own and hasn't moved on from a defining moment in her teens. You really feel for her as she negotiates how to cope with her hostile colleagues not to say her well-meaning but overbearing mother.. But it's the compassion shown throughout that makes this book shine. Highly recommended. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Loved this so much!
First, an amazing, funny, cheeky premise - what if you could see what everyone was saying about you at work? What would you do? Great 'thought experiment'. But having read the blurb, I also wasn't clear how this premise would make a whole book - so I was pleasantly surprised at how well-rounded the story was.
Second, the characters. I loved the slow unpicking of each character, finding out firstly their 'dirty laundry' and unpleasant habits, but then by the end of the novel, their deeper motivations and hidden stories. I also found the main character super refreshing, a raw, authentic heroine. Her day-to-day apathy and how this manifested in 'goblin mode' felt really relatable, but then following her growth over the course of the novel really gratifying.
Finally, I didn't realise this was a "rom-com" and this was another pleasant surprise - a nicely handled, sweet relationship. Builds on the second point but I also found Cliff incredibly refreshing as a male love interest - to foreground kindness and conscientiousness so strongly in such a role was brilliant.
Highly recommended. Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the opportunity to read.

This is a fascinating delve into office politics seen through anxious, socially inept Jolene's eyes. Each of her colleagues has their own agenda, their own character defects which are increasingly exaggerated as the narrative unfolds.

There's comedy, Jolene herself being sharply funny, and her Persian family brings a strong tragi-comic thread. There's much sadness with themes of estranged family members, coercive control, a child seeking the attention her mother fails to give her. Awkward moment abound as Jolene cannot stop herself in time from making inappropriate remarks.

I found the 'one year later, chapter rushed. Perhaps a little less detail in the earlier part of the book would have allowed more time to tell what happened in the intervening year.

Natalie Sue's 'I Hope This Finds You Well' was a super fun read. I found myself laughing out loud at Jolene's sarcastic inner thoughts and dry sense of humour. She was a blend of sarcasm and anxiety which I found endearing, and I warmed to her as an MC immediately.

I thought the last third of the book was maybe a little rushed, and could have been unpacked a little more, as we brushed past some quite serious topics at a surface level. It would have been good to sit in the discomfort and realities of the topics a little more.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would definitely read another book by the author!

This book explores the world of office politics through the lens of Jolene, a deeply anxious woman with a troubled past. It’s a reminder that there is always more to people than what meets the eye. With its mix of emotions, gossip, and nuanced characters, it’s a real page turner. Cliff’s character and his connection with Jolene really shine, making it the heart of the story for me. Plus, the incorporation of Persian culture and Jolene’s experience as a second generation immigrant gives her character some additional depth.

Really enjoyed the story and I think it would make for a brilliant book club pick (so much to unpack haha). Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the eARC.

Natalie Sue’s novel starts pretty bleakly: our heroine, Jolene, is working in a grim office with horrible colleagues and she, herself, has burned any social bridges a while back and is isolated and depressed. She has no friends and is pretty unlikeable. She sends a bitchy email to a colleague that she thinks will not be seen and lands herself in trouble with HR. I thought we might be in Eleanor Oliphant territory, but this book has its own original premise that spins out into a funny and warm story. Jolene’s dry wit prevents this from being saccharine and we learn what has made her so afraid of people. Her Persian parents are another dimension of complication in her life, so keen for her to do well that she has fabricated an entire life to keep them happy. Not that that is working. With her work problems spiralling, and the new HR guy monitoring her internet use, Jolene is given an unexpected insight into her colleagues activities that she thinks can save her. Or maybe it will make everything worse. I Hope This Finds You Well is a thoroughly enjoyable and accomplished novel. Highly recommended.

It’s hard not to love this book - a delve into office politics and also reminding you that not everything you see on the surface is what the person is about. Above all this book is funny. It gets a bit more serious towards the end and maybe a little too neat - but it was a great read, and stopped me doing things I was meant to be doing!

Loved this and it wasn't what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be some mystical spell or that the HR person was going to be a kind of fairy godmother sort of story. But it was about a genuine mistake and how things can happen and move forward. I really enjoyed it and it kept me interested right until the end.

This book will be loved by anyone who’s ever worked in an office. I couldn’t put it down and read it in a day (a wonderful palette cleanser after a book I’d been wanting to read and didn’t enjoy). The characters are real, flawed humans that you sometimes love sometimes hate, sometimes are frustrated with. It reminds us all about kindness and not knowing what other people are going through while having me howling with laughter in parts. I loved it all!

I LOVED this book! It was recommended to my by my colleague and I tore through it in two days. The protagonist is beyond relatable, and felt real from the first page. I found myself laughing out loud (which I never do), blushing when she blushed and actually rooting for the HR guy?! This will be one I send to my subscribers who are fans of Eleanor Oliphant, Dolly Alderton & Sara Pasco. It's readable, perfectly written and just a straight 10/10.

I’m a big fan of fiction that uses documents interspersed with the main text, as this does - emails, instant messages, I love them all! The sense of futility in office work depicted here resonated with me, and reminded me of how surreal such workplaces can be. Recommended!

This book was an absolute highlight of my 2024 reading so far. The main character is flawed but relatable and the office setting with its relationships, micro aggressions and politics will be familiar to anyone who has worked in such an environment. This was a very readable book that I will revisit for a re-read.

This was a fun read, and something that I'm sure almost everyone can relate to. Who hasn;t sent an email that they;ve regretted? Who wouldn;t want to know exactly what your coworkers were thinking and saying about you. Well, as Jolene finds out, sometimes you;re better off not knowing.

This book was everything that I expected from a fun read, with more thrown in as w ell. Jolene's ever complicated relationship with Cliff was a nice line, and the trauma of Ellie, and how deep those emotions were was not something I was expecting, and only made Jolene more real, and totally understandable.

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.