The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
Read from February 17th to February 18th
Romance
387 pages
Synopsis:
Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.
2) A person’s undoing
3) Joshua Templeman
Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She’s charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.
Trapped in a shared office together 40 (OK, 50 or 60) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking.
If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she’s got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth-shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong.
Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn’t hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.
Review
Number 1 reason that I was super amped about diving into this book is because of the title! Tell me, when you think about "The Hating Game" are you also thinking "this just has the enemies to lovers trope written all over it!? Because I totally did. It is definitely my favourite trope so I just needed to have and to read this book.
Unlike most enemies to lovers books that I've read, this one just didn't do it for me. I found the hatred and some of the banter to be childish. It reminded me of when I didn't like someone in highschool and we would just absolutely torture each other every day because we were spiteful little shits. Basically, Lucy and Josh just play these awful games with each other. SOMEHOW, they both still have a job?? Do they even actually get work done? This made me feel like it was a YA book and it wasn't really supposed to be YA. SOOoOOOOooOo big ol' nope in this department.
There was some banter between the two characters that was just GOLD though. A couple times, I was giggling. Thank you Sally for the laughs!
The beginning of this book really dragged for me. Like REALLY dragged. I was determined to finish this in one sitting and it was making it dang hard lemme tell ya. Then, all of a sudden, shit starts happening real quick.
Spoiler-y time!
We figure out that Josh has been in love with Lucy all along (a little cliche but I am here for it!), he's painted his room the colour of her eyes, and she's become this badass heroine and stood up for him with his family (you go Glenn Coco). It all happens so fast but it was all so so so so good!
