I Hope This Email Finds You In Hell by Mackenzie Reed Review

When staying late at the office leads to witnessing an exorcism, Brie Benson's mundane life takes a hellish turn…literally.
&nbsp

After her parents' death, twenty-seven-year-old Brie has mastered the art of compartmentalization to survive her mind-numbing routine as a receptionist at a life insurance company. But when she accidentally catches her hot, uptight boss, Luke, performing an exorcism on Debra from accounting, her carefully ordered world implodes.
&nbsp

Swearing Brie to secrecy, Luke reveals he's from a line of demon hunters and that demonic activity is spiking. But when her emotional support coworker vanishes, Brie is determined to find her. With nothing left to lose, she convinces Luke to let her join his rescue mission.
&nbsp

The problem? Their destination is hell. And the entrance is in Times Square.
&nbsp

Now Brie and Luke must navigate a corporate underworld of monsters and bureaucratic nightmares while racing to save their colleague and repair a tearing veil between worlds. All before their growing feelings become irrelevant and hell claims them forever.

This review is based on a complimentary Advanced Reader Copy provided by Berkley.

2026 is only halfway through, but Mackenzie Reed’s adult novel debut I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell is certainly in the running for the most amusing and eye‑catching book title. Mixing bits of office workplace banter with paranormal romance, this book is an accessible and casual adventure turned rescue road trip through hell. Tonally lighthearted while including moderately detailed paranormal fantasy lore, this book is best suited for contemporary romance or chick‑lit/women’s fiction readers looking for some fantasy‑action flavor. However, for veteran SFF readers or those purely invested in romance, the limited detailing and serviceable yet pedestrian romantic beats may leave something to be desired.

Demon hunters, office shenanigans, a road trip through hell, oh my! If the title isn’t attention‑grabbing on its own, this book’s premise involving coworkers venturing into the corporate underworld is equally silly and genius. The story has a hilarious and solid start that’s consistently entertaining, with great office‑room banter mixed with familiar contemporary romance beats. Early chapters slightly resemble procedural Supernatural episodes where Sam and Dean Winchester pose as federal agents or office staff and a poor featured character is bewildered and inevitably pulled into their paranormal exorcisms except reversed, with the story told from the unassuming secretary’s perspective. Between workplace jokes and surprisingly good action scenes, the story has a great start.

As Brie and Luke venture into the underworld, the story shifts into a paranormal‑fantasy‑flavored road trip as the two journey across Hell’s version of America, full of nefarious beings and personalities. Picking this book solely for the title and premise, I was pleasantly surprised by Reed’s ambition and range of supernatural inspirations. What resembles a joking book‑pitch idea evolves into a story with fairly extensive lore and worldbuilding, with a wide assortment of fantasy beings to encounter and avoid. Between its lighthearted tone, paranormal‑romance content, and fantasy underworld, this book makes for a very accessible read for chick‑lit/women’s fiction readers looking for something with SFF flavor or an introduction to the genre. The story moves quickly from underworld state- I mean “division” to division, introducing new threats while the clock is ticking for them to save their coworker and get out before they lose their humanity in hell.

In addition to its interesting fantasy elements, this book includes thoughtful explorations of darker topics such as grief, guilt, and overcoming past trauma and PTSD‑induced anxiety. Brie’s backstory involving her past professional pursuits, her family relationships, and the way her life got derailed and ended up in a boring life‑insurance office provides substance against the otherwise fun premise. The material isn’t delved into very deeply, and Brie’s self‑healing journey feels forgotten and rushed in the loosely written back half of the book, but it’s a fine attempt that is easy and safe to read for sensitive readers.

While this book has a little bit of everything and mixes and matches its fantasy and paranormal elements, the story walks a fine line between being creative with its various eldritch content and feeling like a hodgepodge of ideas thrown together. Between the rescue‑mission premise, the corporate‑themed humor, the paranormal romance, reflections on grief, and various fantasy ideas, the book unfortunately feels like it’s trying to do a lot but nothing particularly well. Across the board, there is a lack of detail or development in almost every narrative idea or storyline. The exploration of past events and anxiety is good but stays at a surface‑level depth. Luke’s backstory is established but revealed in an anticlimactic manner or through infodumping, with important details brought up after the fact in a circumstantial “I guess that fits and makes sense” kind of way. Most disappointingly, the recurring corporate and office theme becomes increasingly sparse as the story progresses; the marketed “corporate underworld” and “bureaucratic nightmares” are thinly conceptualized and consist mostly of Luke telling Brie how things function rather than the reader experiencing the underworld’s purposely off‑beat setup. Most of the book can be simplified to the two of them evading two thug-like individuals place to place.

While the story starts off great when Brie and Luke are in the Overworld, it becomes progressively more random the longer they’re in the Underworld. The road trip begins to feel less like an adventure and more like an assortment of random events with little rhyme or reason. Much like the events and action sequences, the story introduces many side characters and Underworld beings who are mysteriously familiar with Luke but does nothing with them once their chapter is up. As a veteran SFF reader, I got the impression that the writing process became “what other paranormal beings can be shoehorned into the story,” when a less‑is‑more approach would’ve likely been more effective. The end result is a book that feels relatively fast‑paced due to the lack of detail and complex plotting while simultaneously feeling slow and underwhelming due to a lack of cohesion. This is made worse by the lackluster humor, which is far less effective in the Underworld compared to early chapters at the office or at Luke’s house. Reed also heavily inserts pop‑culture references, but they get old quickly because their contextual use is often the same: Brie compares something to X, and Luke has no idea what that is. It’s funny the first time but becomes a drag the more it’s used, especially since they add nothing to the story or reading experience. The romance also isn’t likely to win the book any awards; it’s serviceable enough by paranormal romance book standards but feels generic, which also could be used to describe Luke’s character as a whole.

While this book obviously isn’t intended to have the same level of detail as regular fantasy novels, there are also quite a few conflicting details or plot holes. In an early Underworld scene, a monster is tossed off the back of the train, causing a blood splatter on the tracks. Yet when Brie and Luke head to passenger cars farther up the train, she remarks about the blood and the body being seen, which shouldn’t have been possible given the direction of the train’s movement and basic physics. Seven devils each assigned per division determined to be a continent, which oddly includes Antarctica, despite having little to no people and no mass transit or in‑lore entrance portal there. The demon Beliar kidnaps his victims outside New York and is able to whisk them to his estate in California across a distance that takes two days to cover, yet he returns to attack Brie back on the East Coast on a timeline that shouldn’t be possible, or he has an ability to warp that’s never mentioned or addressed. Luke’s previous connection with the Underworld and his exit conditions are conflicting regarding who signed off on the bureaucratic papers and the motive for forcing his leave, which directly conflicts with the signee’s original interest. Luke’s entire backstory feels increasingly convoluted in order to explain where he has been, where he got his skillset, and why he was in the Underworld and Overworld respectively. Eric Kripke lore this book is not.

With an amazing title, premise, and synopsis, I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell promises a fun and kooky time. On paper, the book makes a good attempt at that while mixing a variety of different storylines, genres, and hellish ideas. However, the execution leaves much to be desired due to a general lack of development, questionable plotting, and an ending that feels both rushed and anticlimactically simple, resulting in unsatisfying sendoff despite thematically on‑brand. Casual or vibe readers might find this book to be a nice paranormal romance paired with a sampler of fantasy elements. However, for readers who primarily read fantasy or prefer stories with stronger narrative material, the book’s title is unfortunately likely to be the most memorable part of it.