I Hope This Finds You Well

What would you do if suddenly you discovered you had access to all of your coworkers’ E-mails? From the private communication of upper management all the way down, every employee inbox was open for you to see–and to manipulate. I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue tells the story of Jolene Smith, an unhappy administrative assistant, who gets into a bit of E-mail trouble and has her E-mail access curtailed. Or so she thinks. While she believes she will have limitations imposed on her E-mail privileges, the complete opposite occurs, and she finds she can read everyone’s mails, past and present, as well as eavesdrop on their chats. What will she do when she learns what people really think of her and of each other? Even more important, when her cyber-snooping leads her to discover that layoffs are imminent, how will she use this inside information to save her own job and set up situations to jeopardize others?

I was hooked on this book the moment I opened it. Sue filled it will realistic dialogue and workplace scenarios which could have been taken from my own staff room. She captured the inner thoughts of Jolene so intimately that it was natural for me to think she was writing from personal experience. Some of Jolene’s paranoias, anxieties and fetishes seemed as if they could have been lifted from Sue’s own psychiatrist’s notebook.

Jolene transforms from feeling like a tormented Carrie White into having the most power in the company, even wrapping her boss Gregory around her finger when she uncovers that he is having an extramarital affair. But will all this information benefit her or suffocate her?

She is torn as she falls in love with Cliff, the HR rep who is assigned to her case. Their flirting goes on and off and the reader, right until the end of the book, doesn’t know if they will allow their relationship to continue. It certainly paints an accurate picture of office politics and bureaucracy when love comes calling.

Sue inserts a comedic story involving a coworker, Armin, whom she has discovered had woven a tangled web of deceit that involves her. Armin, a bachelor in the story, is eager to give his mother who is terminally ill something positive to look forward to. By reading his E-mails Jolene finds out that Armin had concocted a story telling his parents that he is engaged to his girlfriend…who is none other than Jolene. All it takes is a photo from an office party to convince his family that his colleague Jolene is really his fiancée. Jolene agrees to go along with the ruse but ends up being too good of an actor to soothe Armin’s nerves. The families meet for lunches and to plan the wedding and Armin and Jolene have to pretend that they are a genuine couple in love. You will enjoy how much the mothers of the “bride and groom” go over the top in their wedding plans.

As the layoffs start Jolene feels confident that her job is secure but Sue inserts enough twists that the reader can never be sure who is staying in the company and who is being let go. With the irresistible draw of such widespread company confidentiality exposed to her via E-mail access, Jolene might end up jeopardizing her own fate after all.

I Hope This Finds You Well is full of the keenest observances and psychological tugs of war that I often wanted to reread passages because Sue wrote them so well. I felt as if I was a fly on the interior of her psyche. I recorded some passages to show how intimately Sue could probe into Jolene’s mind. It would do them an injustice if I truncated them, as I felt the entire paragraph was necessary:

“I inhale as I make my way over to their lively table. My first mistake was not packing a change of pants. The ones I’m wearing are wrinkled from a day of sitting in an office, and as I make my way over it’s like a runway of shame to a row of harsh judges. Aunty Miriam spots me first and gives me a look that’s somehow proud and disapproving at the same time. Aunty Miriam is the only aunty here who’s actually my aunt. In the Persian aunty network, there’s a series of women in every corner of the world who are either vaguely related to me or close family friends. If I were to vacation in Antarctica, my mom would tell me to check in with an aunty there or face certain public shaming. Today Aunty Miriam is sporting aggressively dark eyeshadow and a designer handbag that’s so sleek and sharp, it could be wielded as a weapon. She nudges my mom, who is seated beside her, and mutters something–a lovely comment about me, I’m sure. Mom yells, ‘Jolene, come sit,’ as if I were planning on going to the kitchen and showing my nips to the chef if not for her direction. Roya, the one Mom can stand the least, raises her newly threaded eyebrows as she spots me. The ground below me seems to warp as I make my way over to the one available chair at the head of the table.”

“So this is the Kyle of Caitlin’s Instagram, of hand and torso modeling fame. He’s shorter than I pictured. He has his back to me as he greets Garret, but I can already tell that he’s nothing special. His jeans are the Very Bad type–I’d almost categorize them as a red flag. Caitlin takes a big swig of her champagne and walks up to him for a hug. His arm wraps around Caitlin’s shoulders and pulls her in tight against his chest, and he whispers something to her without actually moving his face toward her, in that controlling man way.”

“A good way to not be okay is to spend a whole afternoon internet-stalking a man who every time you see his face, a part of you wants to curse your own existence because it means having to witness his.”

As I do not own a mobile device and I stay away from social media, I was left in the dark at times when I read some chats that Jolene eavesdropped on. However I could understand what some abbreviations meant just by instinctual context. I never figured out what Warhammer was and only checked on-line after I finished the novel. Did Sue assume that her readers would already know? The context never made it clear to me what Warhammer actually was, even though Sue made repeated references to it throughout the novel.