The Hating Game
By: Sally Thorne
Published Year: 2016
Pages: 387
Publisher: William Morrow
Summary (Provided by Goodreads):
Nemesis (n.)
1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome;
2) A person’s undoing;
3) Joshua Templeman.
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. Hate. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through a series of ritualistic passive aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company. Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude.
Now up for the same promotion, their battle of wills has come to a head and Lucy refuses to back down when their latest game could cost her her dream job…But the tension between Lucy and Joshua has also reached its boiling point, and Lucy is discovering that maybe she doesn’t hate Joshua. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.
First Impressions
I love this cover! I think I added it to my TBR without reading the summary. Then this past summer it started popping up all over the place on everyone’s reading lists. So many people were raving about it that it bumped it a little higher on my TBR list. Plus I’m a sucker for relationships that start as hatred and turn into love.
What I thought
This book was really cute!
Lucy has been working with Josh for a while now. They are assistants to co-CEOs and work across from each other. And according to Lucy, they’re mortal enemies. They don’t talk to each other than to insult one another and they constantly play games to one up the other. When a new promotion is offered that only one of the will receive, their relationship starts to change.
This book was a bit more like a romance novel than I initially expected. I’m totally ok with that, but I thought it was going to have a contemporary feel to it and it was a bit racier than that.
In all honesty, I didn’t like Lucy much, loved Josh, but felt like he definitely does not exist in the real world. Lucy was annoying and I felt like so many of her behaviors were childish and unacceptable. From the beginning I could understand why this guy would hate her. She reads into everything and is wrong pretty much 100% of the time. Over the course of the book, she grew on me, but I was a little worried at the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to continue because of how much I disliked her character. In fact, she grew on me so much that a few days after finishing the book, I realized that I missed her and Joshua and their relationship.
The relationship between Joshua and Lucy was fun. I really enjoyed their banter. They had some funny moments that I appreciated. I also really appreciated that their relationship didn’t fall into some cliché romance novel tropes. For example, Lucy dates a guy named Danny at the beginning of the book (meaning like, goes on a date or two), and I got nervous that he was going to somehow come back and ruin the relationship but he didn’t. It was such a relief to read a romance book in which the conflict was just the characters and not additional outside forces that are ridiculous. There are enough issues that one can come up with without including unnecessary outside influences.
While I don’t think I am in love with this book as a lot of the book community seems to be, it was a very enjoyable fluff novel. I am definitely looking forward to more of Thorne’s books. She is similar in style to Susan Elizabeth Phillips who is my favorite romance novelist. I like that there is more to the story than just the sex scenes. There were some character issues that I had, but luckily it did get better as the book went on. If you like hate to love romances you will enjoy this book. I would also recommend it to people who need a light, fluffy, fun, and humorous book.