The Hating Game: A Novel

Product Information

This is the first book in many years which I have read which I needed to reread within minutes of finishing it. The dialogue in this book just sparkles and the sparks of attraction between Lucy and Joshua just explode off the page yet without the too-close detailing of the sex act. There’s a full-length mirror, and I see myself, at long last sitting on the bed in his robin’s-egg bedroom. But as the tension between Lucy and Joshua reaches its boiling point, it’s clear that the real battle has only just begun . I've read some reviews too and a lot of people seem to like it but some seem to hate it to a degree.

But too many of the books I’ve read by other authors since have veered closer and closer to it… and then we come to The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. There isn’t much that everyone hasn’t already said about this book so I will go straight into why I loved the book. There was also a lot of nice guy and short guy bashing and, worst of all for a romance novel, it wasn’t sexy.But, like I'm sure a lot of people can relate with, her desire to be liked by others often meant she was taken advantage of. Realizing neither wants to work under the other, they make a bet: whoever does not get the job has to quit. There was so much tension throughout the book, and their attraction for each other was really raw and organic. Where I usually balk at any book written in the first point of view, I absolutely adored Sally Thorne’s writing and heroine Lucy’s thoughts are funny and sharp and her sense of aesthetics is brilliantly realised in her descriptions of smells and colours. This story is quite conventionally a romance with its use of well-known tropes – enemies-to-lovers, bring-a-fake-date-to-a-wedding and office-romance.

I have not enjoyed a workplace romance this much since the early seasons of Jim and Pam on the American version of THE OFFICE. I don’t want to spoil the discovery for yourself, but it’s definitely worth reading if you like discovering what makes a character tick, what’s happening beneath icy eyes. Aside from Lucy’s short stature – which wasn’t much, or any below average – her biggest insecurity seemed to be her background. When a chance appears at a promotion that would put one in charge of the other, their simmering tension boils over and romance ensues because, as Ms Thorne puts on the very first pages of this book, there’s a fine line between love and hate, which is a line I used to torment a set of romantic nemeses back in grade school but has no business being a maxim by which to conduct adult relationships.As much as she bent over backwards to please the people who did like her, she is cold and cuts off those who don’t take an instant liking of her. I just don't even know what this means, why was this written, why do you want to keep saying this in your novel. When you throw in their fighting and that they could be funny without even trying, this book became a favorite so easily.