Book Review: Hate Mail by Donna Marchetti

‘Hate Mail’ by Donna Marchetti is a romantic comedy that was released in 2024. The book tells the story of former pen pals, Naomi Light and Luca Pichler, who, throughout the years have been sending mean letters to each other, while also being the other’s closest confidante. Until, two years ago, when Luca changed his address and never reached out to Naomi again.

When Naomi has almost totally given up on reconnecting with Luca, she gets her first piece of fan mail at the news station she works at as a weathergirl – declaring the sender wants her to be struck by lightning because it would make the weather reports much more entertaining.

Knowing Luca is reaching out to her again, Naomi is determined to track him down and resume their friendship – if you can call sending snippy, snide, and angry remarks back and forth friendship?

On a quest to track Luca down and resume their pen-pal friendship, Naomi, and her friend Anne, travel the country on weekend jaunts of sleuthing. Meanwhile, Naomi also ends up falling into a casual relationship with her upstairs neighbour, a kind man called Jake, an aquatic veterinarian, with a fantastic body, that makes a lot of noise in his flat, directly above hers. Their flirty banter and spontaneous dates are peppered throughout Naomi’s mission to find Luca, having traveled from Miami Florida to San Diego California to a military base in Georgia, and then to Dallas Texas.

I loved the running theme with names and getting them wrong, nicknames, misunderstandings, etc. that were peppered throughout the story – from Caterpillar Girl to Patrick Facey, each one was a nod to the overarching story that added to the charm of the book.

I enjoyed the sense of character voice, the wit, the sarcasm, and the banter between Naomi and Luca, and later Naomi and Jake are fantastic. Marchetti was fabulous at drawing readers in and really getting a sense of who the characters are.

I really enjoyed this book – although I saw the plot twist coming from the get-go. I will admit, I fell for the red herrings, but guessing the twist is always a bane of my existence when reading, so it certainly drew my ire just a little bit. Though, ‘Hate Mail’ made it up significantly through not only shenanigans involving kittens that know how to bowl but also dares that Luca keeps sending Naomi, inadvertently making her go viral for wearing the forbidden colour green as a weathergirl.

However, there were a few shortfalls – maybe it’s me and my frustration with the high-stakes romance novel melodrama but considering that Penny ends her conversation with Naomi in Dallas declaring her estranged ex owes her father a whopping hundred grand, things being tied up in a bow with a house, pets, and domestic bliss seems a bit far-fetched. Am I to expect that Penny isn’t going to track Luca down herself, and sue him for that hundred grand? If I was owed that much money, I would go to the ends of the earth to get it back, plus interest.

Overall, I am glad I read this book, it will certainly make me find the whole idea of being an upstairs neighbour a bit irritating because I’ll be self-conscious of my own noise levels – but I really enjoyed it.