I Hope This Finds You Well
A Novel
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4.2 • 78 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
In this wildly funny and heart-warming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job. A laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.
As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.
But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.
Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This workplace comedy is both wickedly sharp and unexpectedly sweet-natured. Jolene hates her middle-management corporate job almost as much as she hates everyone she works with. Her passive aggression already has her on thin ice with HR, but when an IT mistake accidentally gives her access to every email across the entire company, she learns that a huge round of layoffs is expected...and that maybe her coworkers aren’t as awful as they seem. Debut novelist Natalie Sue has a delightful sense of humour, but what stuck with us was how the story transformed Jolene from a cynical, hard-drinking misanthrope into a thoughtful, empathetic person. (We also loved her aggressively loving mom, one of several delightful side characters.) I Hope This Finds You Well is a gem we wanted to recommend to all our friends.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sue debuts with a delightfully quirky office comedy about a 33-year-old administrative assistant's interpersonal battles in a Canadian supermarket chain's regional office. Jolene's days consist of eight hours of mind-numbing work, followed by drinking to forget about the accidental death of her best friend, Ellie, when they were in high school. At the office, she adds cathartic notes in white font at the bottom of emails (after thanking "morale club" leader Rhonda for a reminder about a meeting, she invisibly adds, "Deep in my core, I find you insufferable"). When Jolene forgets to white out a nasty note to her nemesis Caitlin, who subsequently complains, she's forced to complete an antiharassment course and have her emails monitored. Instead of adding the restrictions to her computer, however, the HR guy accidentally gives Jolene access to all her fellow employees' inboxes and direct messages. Among the funny discoveries is a thread between a coworker and his parents in which he sends photos of Jolene and claims she's his girlfriend. The workplace hijinks produce steady laughs, and Sue adds depth through the backstory of Ellie, with whom Jolene found solace as a fellow misfit. This is a must-read for fans of Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End.
Customer Reviews
Super fun début!
So much incredible writing, imaginative and hilarious imagery, believable character development and ‘reveal’, awesome storyline. There were some areas of writing that took me out of the moment, a few too many repetitons of specific phrasing or circumstance, that took my rating out of five-star range. But for the most part, this book was a delight and I had a hard time putting it down! Definitely laughed out loud many, many times. I’ll be looking for more from this author.
Grieving process
Loved it!! 😭😭😭 i am grieving as i just finished it!! I need more of that!!!