Book Review: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Audience: Contemporary romance
Length: 384 pages
Author: Sally Thorne
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Release Date: August 9th, 2016
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

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.

ASDFGHJKL; SO CUTE I HAVE NO WORDS.

I get it. I TOTALLY GET THE HYPE for this book. Y’all. This & Josh and Hazel in the last few weeks? I’m on a contemporary romance roll.

My favorite portions of a romance book is the banter. I LIVE FOR BANTER. Witty and amusing lines that make me laugh and say: you know you love each other. Lucy and Josh were top notch at this. I thought it was clever and cute to have them play games the entire book as they really got to know one another.

The sexual tension was off the charts. It was so intense and all I could do was flip page after page (causing me to stay up til 2:30 AM…) to find out what would happen next. This story immediately grabbed my attention and it was easy to keep going.

I obsessed over the fact that Josh has loved Lucy from day one. Saying he had one more weekend to win her over? Y’ALL *cue hand over heart, smitten look*. Never being the nice guy? IT’S OK JOSH. LUCY’S GOT YOU. The way she threw down to back Josh was a solid way to put a cap on some things.

One thing that did bother me was Lucy’s obsession with how good Josh looked. She was relentless in commenting on it and it got a bit old. I also did not need to keep hearing about his serial killer eyes. That was a tad weird. I get it, he’s gorgeous, but I felt that could have been dialed down (especially because she commented to herself how she was saying this too often!?) Josh was also a biiiiit intense at times. Lucy would comment on being afraid of him, and I don’t think anyone should feel that way about a partner.

Overall audience notes: