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3.5 stars.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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 so 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's colleagues all seem to be awful, selfish suck ups 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 her, she sees them all in a new light and begins go realise that the face people present 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.