About the Book

Title: I Hope This Doesn’t Find You
Published: 2024

Cover Story: Stock Drawing
Drinking Buddy: No
MPAA Rating: PG (alcohol use, mild adult themes)
Talky Talk: Over the Top
Bonus Factor: Email
Bromance Status: Spam Folder

Cover Story: Stock Drawing

It fits, but nothing about this stands out. The girl looks like she’s crushing after that guy (or judging his outfit). We don’t get the sense of rivalry that is critical to the plot.

The Deal:

Sadie Wen is the most impressive girl at her impressive private school. Potential valedictorian, school captain, and the person the teachers always go to when they need something. The person everyone goes to when they need something. Of course, she has to put up with her obnoxious co-captain, Julius Gong, the handsome boy whom everyone just loves. She’d like to smack him in his perfect face.

Sadie is sick always having to be flawless for the world, so she lets off steam by composing horrible, no-holds-barred emails to classmates and teachers, with Julius on the receiving end of most of them. Of course, she’d never actually send them. President Lincoln once mediated a conflict by advising someone to write the nastiest letter they could to their rival…and then throw it away.

But one black day, somehow those letters are sent. All of them. Dating back to elementary school. Sadie just let everyone at school know exactly what she thinks of them. She’s gone from living doormat to pariah. And of course Julius is just going to have a field day, knowing how he’s lived rent-free in her head all these years.

But sometimes you just need to say the things you want to say. And sometimes rivals will surprise you.

Drinking Buddy: Your Round. Again.

Two pints of beer cheersing with a "Denied" stamp over them

I have never read a YA character who lets people walk all over them as much as Sadie does. I’d buy it if she loans her slacker friend her class notes. When an acquaintance demands the she photocopy a semester’s worth of notes on color-coded papers, and make copies for her friends as well, it was ridiculous. Other kids in the group project not pulling their weight? Totally believable. Three kids just announcing that they hadn’t done their part on the day the project was due and Sadie having to scramble to do their sections in less than an hour? Way over the top.

I also never got a sense of why Sadie is so driven to be perfect. Her older brother is skating through college on an athletic scholarship. When her strict, Chinese-born mother finds out Sadie secretly threw a party and got drunk, she says she’s glad her daughter is coming out of her shell a little. Sadie’s obsession with perfection borders on mania.

MPAA Rating: PG (alcohol use, mild adult themes)

Sadie’s rivalry with Julius made perfect sense. We’ve all had those people that we really just want to show up. But her obsession with him was creepy. She goes to describing what a truly awful, terrible person he is to rhapsodizing over his many, many beautiful features. I didn’t get the impression that she was denying she had a crush on him. I worried she was going to cut his brake lines.

And of course, Julius (surprise, surprise) always held a secret torch for Sadie, which he showed by insulting and humiliating her every chance he got. When I picked this book up, I thought ‘You know what would be original? If these two didn’t end up together.’

I was destined to be disappointed.

Talky Talk: Over the Top

For starters, I spent the first fifty pages trying to figure out where in the hell this book was set. I had assumed the US, but then Sadie mentioned Julius visiting the US. They go to an academy where almost all the students are Asian, but everyone has Western first names, so they don’t appear to be in Asia. I finally read the author’s bio and she lives in Australia, so that’s probably it, but this whole book took place in ‘anytown’, without any descriptors of what the city was like or where in the country it was located.

And every character was a ridiculous stereotype. Julius’s older brother, who rubs his successes in everyone’s face. Sadie’s classmates, who pretty much order her around. Sadie’s slacker brother. Her cool bestie. Also, we have a bad case of Saved By the Bell syndrome (where all teachers are buffoons or jerks). Sadie and Julius’s rivalry makes the school look bad, so the principal orders the kids to be friends. The director tells the pair to plan an entire overnight class trip in one night. The cyberbullying expert the school brings in keeps mentioning she’s only there for the money. It may be the teacher in me, but I felt like I was reading a sitcom.

Bonus Factor: Email

We all have that coworker who hits ‘reply all’ to every single group email. And we’ve all hit ‘send’ before realizing we forgot the attachment or something. The thing about email is you can’t take it back. No waiting for the mail carrier to come, it moves at the speed of technology (I sound like a 1999 computer salesman here, but bear with me).

Sadie wrote all those nasty letters to be cathartic. Just to let off steam about people who hurt her. Now, in one morning, everyone knows what she thinks of them. Even teachers. Sadie just wants to crawl into a hole.

But…maybe some of those things needed to be said. Like the girl who copied Sadie’s science fair project and won first place. That wasn’t cool. And maybe if she’d had it out with Julius years ago, their rivalry wouldn’t have been so intense. Who knows, they might have even been frienemies.

But it’s too late for that now. Everyone hates Sadie. It’s funny, though. The guy who insulted her the worst turns up at school the next day with a black eye. And Julius has a bruised hand.

Bromance Status: Spam Folder

I’m going to delete this book, but not before marking it ‘not junk.’ I’ll see what else this writer has to offer.

Literary Matchmaking

True Letters From a Fictional Life

In James Liddel’s True Letters From a Fictional Life, a boy’s private, unsent letters somehow arrive to the addressees.

Woke Up Like This

In Woke Up Like This by Amy Lea, a young woman realizes she’s destined to end up with her bitter rival.

When You Get the Chance

Emma Lord’s When You Get the Chance is another cute ‘enemies to lovers’ book.

FCC Full Disclosure: I received a free e-copy of this book from the publisher, but no money or NFTs. I Hope This Doesn’t Find You comes out February 6.

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Brian wrote his first YA novel when he was down and out in Mexico. He now lives in Missouri with his wonderful wife and daughter. He divides his time between writing and working as a school librarian. Brian still misses the preachy YA books of the eighties.