If you want a summer read, look no further! I Hope This Finds You Well has the right combination of humour, romance, and hilarious office drama with enough pettiness that it is impossible not to root for some of the characters. Characters also gain substance through their traumatic backstories, which are balanced to create empathy without taking away from the lightheartedness of the story. 

 

The narrative, written from a first-person point of view, follows Jolene, an Iranian-American young woman stuck in a dead-end job she hates. It’s not only the job that she resents but also her colleagues, each having various levels of pettiness to which she answers alike. To give an example, she adds hilariously offensive text in white at the end of her emails. When she forgets to change the font in one of her emails, her intrusive thoughts are for all to see. So, she’s put under supervision and needs to do sensitivity training with the cute and amiable new HR guy, Cliff. 

 

When Cliff tries to set up her email to send out alerts if she uses derisive words, he accidentally allows her access to everyone’s emails and direct messages. Panicking at first, Jolene sees this as her way to escape the coming layoffs, and to use the information in her favour. But things never go as planned, so her path leads her to forge bonds with people she didn’t think she wanted to know, a romance story that fits well with the entire narrative, and her coming to terms with her past. 

 

This book has it all: the vicious colleague-Instagram-influencer-wannabe, the good-looking good guy dealing with family trauma, the invasive Iranian mother(s) and aunties and the pressure they put on their children, the theme of unknown pains that people deal with and are ready to share if you show them a bit of empathy, and an unexpected journey healing from past grief, forging new connections and changing your life, the hard way. 

 

A perfect book for the summer holidays! It made me giggle, laugh out loud, hope for retribution, and even shed some tears.