This was like A Man Called Ove vibes with a thirty-three year old woman in an office and I really liked it! Jolene was really hard to root for for a really long time and I really hated a LOT of the decisions she made, they just felt so unrealistic even considering her character, and though it's a long road and a wild ride, I ended up really hoping for the best for her. 3.5 rounded up!

“I Hope This Finds You Well” mark is a workplace novel with rich sarcastic humor, and complex characters that kept me up late at night reading. The story follows, Jolene, an administrative assistant in Calgary who REALLY hates her job. When a strange software glitch allows her to read her colleagues’ emails, she becomes engrossed by her coworkers’ workplace dramas and personal woes. Jolene finds herself tangled in a complex web in her workplace and unravels her own life in the process - but in the best way.

What I liked: Jolene is incredibly funny and relatable. I really loved learning about Jolene’s family and her Persian heritage. I also thought that the way Sue handled a training high school incident in Jolene’s past was masterful. I also really appreciated that Jolene’s slow burn romance complemented the plot but didn’t take it over. Finally, quite of the few minor characters had incredibly rich backstories, which I also really appreciated.

What I didn’t love: honestly… I can’t think of much to change. This one was one of my favorite recent reads.

I highly recommend this one. If you’re looking for a fun and funny read that centers personal development. Thank you for the ARC, NetGalley!

What I liked: What would you do if you were accidentally given system admin privileges allowing you to see all your coworkers emails? Jolene chooses to use the information to get a leg up on her terrible office-mates. This book was hilarious. The premise, the dialogue, the variety of characters. I loved all of that. More and more I’ve been enjoying stories where the female lead is struggling with mental health issues. This book could have easily been all laughs, no substance. But the way the author wrote Jolene, our protagonist, gave this book so much more depth than I was expecting.

What I didn’t like: There were a lot of cringe-worthy moments in this book. Intentionally, for sure. But I did find myself viscerally stressed / cringing for Jolene and that ended up hurting my neck.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice: 🥰
No-scroll: 📵📵📵📵
Jaw-clench: 😬😬😬

Recommend if: you like moderately unhinged protangonists, you’re an Office / Parks and Rec fan, you like romances off the beaten path

Office Space meets Mean Girls. I loved this one! Jolene is painfully relatable as a socially awkward executive assistant languishing in unresolved trauma. Her accidental access to company wide emails and instant messages creates funny, cringy and heartbreaking moments. Such a witty, fun read. I couldn’t put it down.

4 stars out of 5
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.
I Hope This Finds You Well follows Jolene as she navigates the unexpected parts of dull office life. She gets caught sending white-text messages to a colleague, and everything goes downhill from there. Or does it?
At first I wasn't sure about this novel. For maybe 30%. And then suddenly I was hooked and I couldn't put it down. Something about the way Jolene talks and thinks was funny and captivating. She was also a bit annoying, and I kept wanting her to see her self worth and the truth about other people's actions, and she didn't, so of course I was invested because who doesn't love knowing better than the main character as she continues to seemingly mess up her life? I was hooked seeing what she was going to do next.
Jolene is very depressed after a traumatic accident and that depression is seeping into the rest of her life. She's also understandably depressed about working her office job. Her view point of herself is skewed but in a way that I think many people actually live. I appreciated how the author showed her coping. It was relatable.
Jolene's web that she weaves of reacting and lying and trying to cover things up gets more and more complicated, and we follow her as she faces the consequences of all this. I liked the ending a lot and I liked the story. I liked the characters, the plot twists, the way it developed. The author's skill really shines as the story unfolds.
This was an enjoyable read. I truly couldn't put it down. I actually delayed a nap to finish this book. Worth it.

This was honestly so unexpected in a good way although I must admit there were times I didn’t know if I was actually reading the same story. I loved and enjoyed the banter and romance but my heart went for all the struggles the characters went through. Not gonna lie, it took me a while to get into the book, but once it started to gain pacs I couldn’t stop reading and wanting to know more and more. Overall it was a nice fun read I would definitely recommend. Ps, the cover is just the cutest.

I loved the office communication (email/instant messages) piece of it, as it gave a little bit of old school vibe. I appreciated how the book was a fresh take on a plot device that could have been trite. Each character had some depth so that no one was fully "good" or "bad" (except for a couple!).

I devoured and adored this book. It’s witty, snarky, and touching — a poignant send-up of office culture, and all the things we don’t know about the people we spend our workdays with, the ways our coworkers can leave an indelible imprint on us, and the masks we wear in different situations. Bravo to Natalie Sue on this brilliant debut!

[spoilers ahead]

I left my long-time corporate office job a month ago, and as someone who regularly used to hide extra text in emails (disguised in white text, obviously, but mine were always funny, or designed to make the reader feel good), I related to the main character, Jolene, big time. Her secret messages, however, aren’t so nice — and when they’re discovered by her office nemesis, she’s put on a performance plan, and HR installs restrictive monitoring software on her machine. Except, instead of the restrictive setting, Jolene ends up with the God setting, and can sift through all of her coworkers’ email inboxes (and outboxes) and chat messages. She decides to use her inside knowledge to her advantage to save her job, and the plot branches from there — introducing us to Cliff in HR, Jolene’s parents, her coworkers Rhonda and Arvin, and young neighbor Miley. We learn that everyone is carrying a secret struggle, and by the end, anti-social Jolene has built a patchwork of community. If a rising tide lifts all boats, Jolene is the tide — confronting her own secret trauma helps her start to heal.

Note: I was provided an ARC by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for the ARC! Natalie Sue perfectly encapsulates the ridiculousness of office politics and made me feel seen. Jolene was such a fun character — awkward and chaotic but willing to grow. This book was so entertaining but also surprisingly heartwarming; I was completely invested.

Thank you William Morrow & NetGalley for the ARC!

I was so excited to get the approval for this novel - I just knew it was going to be perfect for me. And let me tell you, it did NOT disappoint! I found myself highlighting so many of the passages in this book, as I could relate to Jolene's character more often than not. I absolutely loved Cliff and Jolene's banter, and how Jolene developed throughout the book. I will say, I definitely did not know how it was going to end, so I was engaged until the very last page! I loved this one and was so glad I read it.

Thank you again for the ARC!

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for granting me this ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book is set to be published May 21, 2024.

I absolutely loved this book! I wasn't sure what to expect but I was very surprised (in the best way) by how much I enjoyed this read. Our main character, Jolene, works in a dead end office job. She comes in, does her job, and leaves. She doesn't really socialize or make that much of an effort. Her way of getting by is to write silly and often rude post scripts in her emails, but in white font so nobody can read them. She is caught. But when her computer is altered by the company, she ends up with administrative privileges and can see everyone's emails and messages. Stuff hits the fan from there.

Natalie Sue did such a great job crafting a really complicated and likable cast of characters. Any one of them could have been intolerable (Jolene included, she definitely made some bad decisions) but Sue makes her characters flawed and layered in way that made them likable, even when they had done bad things.

I think fans of the Office or Superstore will really like this book, though it does deal with some heavy subject matter. I laughed, I cried, and I got butterflies thinking about a certain HR cutie with a penchant for donuts.

I highly recommend this and I'll definitely be buying a physical copy when this comes out!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

this is the kind of story I am always looking for. it was sad and lonely and relatable and maybe me feel every single thing with Jolene. I cried almost the entire time and I could truly connect with how everyone was feeling.

You can see how Jolene struggles. she knows she shouldn't be doing what she's doing but she is so desperate for SOME kind of attention and to not feel so lonely anymore. and in the midst of that, she realizes she truly isn't alone. everyone is struggling. no one has a perfect life. and sometimes, when you encounter someone who is snarky or unpleasant...maybe they are going through something too.

in the end, everyone had their redemption. I'm happy I got to be there for that journey and for Jolene.

Everybody loves gossip, right? But when the gossip is about you, it can be hard to take.

This book carefully depicts what it’s like to be depressed and lost. It also shows how one can rise above, take charge and change their life.

I loved this book for the office drama, but stayed reading for the character development. This is a contemporary tale of the modern day workforce, the isolation millennials feel and the hope that is a result of forging a human connection.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book—I can’t wait for my friends to read.

Heartwarming, funny, and relatable; this is a story anyone can place themselves in (for better or worse).

Jolene, a corporate secretary, finds herself in harassment training after crafting targeted (yet hilarious) email responses to her coworkers --which she doesn't "delete before sending" like a normal person but rather SENDS THEM IN WHITE OUT TEXT! This unhinged behavior prompts HR to restrict her computer access, except due to an IT mixup, she now has full admin access to the entire office's online affairs.

The author does a great job crafting the supporting characters into vessels that encompass some of Jolene's own faults. Jolene sees her younger self in her neighbor Miley's desire to fit in, her coworker Rhonda's loneliness, and even enemy-turned-friend Armin's desperate need to please his parents. Through the gift of knowledge (aka the ability to read all her coworker's email's and DM's ) she sees right through the niceties of office politics, discovering her coworkers flaws. She begins using the information to her advantage, but somewhere along the way she begins to empathize with many of them. The main plot of this comedy has a deeper meaning-- you never really know what people are going through.

There are a lot of themes explored here: corporate culture, family expectations, and self-esteem. One I wish was developed more thoroughly was the grief Jolene felt over the loss of a close friend. This grief influences the story, but is never fully understood, and it's one of the areas she never really finds closure. But maybe that's the point? At the end of the day we all have baggage to carry and we have to figure out how to neatly compartmentalize it.

I found myself invested in this story from the start. It's a fresh take on day-to-day office politics that will have you both laughing and crying from one page to the next.

This is a lighthearted and entertaining book about life in an office, the characters we meet and the bonds we make. It is told from the point of view of the socially awkward, depressed, shy but not introverted co-worker Jolene. She hasn’t made any friends or connections at her job of eight years although she would like to. Some of her observations are very amusing and satirical. Her sarcastic sense of humors is what gets her in trouble in the beginning of the book. Forced to take sensitivity training classes with the new HR guy, they quickly form a bond and he begins to bring her out of her shell. A computer snag helps her realize the co-workers around her are either worse than she imagined or better. Maybe she just hasn’t given them the proper chance. Jolene also deals with past traumas which impact her ability to get out of the rut she has created for herself.
Lots of comedic moments in this book, a lovely romance, and heart warming human interest stories made this a really good read for me. I know it is early in the year but so far this is my favorite read. I hope we will see many more books from Natalie Sue in the future.

Thank you Willima Morrow and Netgalley for allowing me early access to this book.

#IHopeThisFindsYouWell #NetGalley.

This was such a fun read - I was immediately sucked in continually compelled to keep reading. The writing was smart and vivid - the reader could have a perfect picture in their mind of what was going on and how the characters were feeling. I was hopeful, frustrated, anxious, thrilled, and devastated along with Jolene.

3.5 stars

This was a highly anticipated book for me for no other reasons than I loved the title, cover, and the hope for a funny workplace drama.
Though it did have its humorous moments, it was far more relatable and genuine than I expected. The characters and situations felt real, and the humor was just right and not too over the top.
I really enjoyed this.

Every once in a while you find a book where the main character just feels like it could be you. Sometimes, that's really not a good thing.

Jolene is awkward, depressed, prone to saying the wrong thing, and a complete homebody who constantly feels like she's disappointed her mother. After being discovered writing a snarky addendum to an email and forced into an HR course, she discovers she has access to the office's emails and correspondence and makes an absolutely insane plan to become a perfect employee and dodge the upcoming layoffs.

This book basically follows Jolene as she gets better with other people, and worse with herself. I cried a lot, but found a lot of relatable hope as well.

I got an eARC from Netgalley (thanks!), but Jolene's scheming and avoidance of her problems resonated with me and you can bet I'll be getting a hard copy when it's available.

First I would like to thank HarperCollins and Netgalley for allowing me early access to this book.

I expected a light and predictable comedy about cubicle workers, but found a heartfelt, compassionate and smart story about very real characters.

This book is perfectly constructed and written, and felt so real.
I coul not put it down.

3.5/5 stars

Jolene knows her coworkers send messages back and forth to one another to talk about her. She feels alienated in the office, desperately trying to make herself as invisible as possible in order to keep her job. She hates her coworkers so much that she tells them how she really feels at the bottom of her emails; she uses white font so they’ll never see it, but she makes the mistake of using light pink and ends up in her bosses office.

Her emails are being screened, but when the new HR guy loads a software onto Jolene’s computer to track her email activity, he unknowingly has given her the power to see emails and conversations from the computers of her coworkers. Should she use this power for good or for evil?

I enjoyed the storyline, but Jolene’s constant worry about her job security was repetitive throughout the book. The humor mixed in with her secret past trauma was enough for me to finish the book, but I still feel as though Jolene’s character could have been less sulky even when her life starts getting better.