Book Review: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

“All I want to do is kiss you until I fall asleep.

I want to slide in between your sheets, and find out what goes on inside your head,

and underneath your clothes.

I want to make a fool of myself over you.”

I read a lot of contemporary romances in 2022. They're fun and easy, and as we know that's exactly what I was looking for when I came out of a highly analytical undergrad program and needed some NeuroCandy in my life. Overall I have about a 50% success rate when it comes to rom coms, which isn't great statistically but I keep going back.

I went into The Hating Game hopeful because I’ve heard many good things about it. I went into it before I went into my rom com rampage and wasn't sure how I felt about the genre yet, so let’s take this journey together.

The Technical Stuff

Reading Format: Audiobook by HarperAudio. Narrated by Katie Schorr.

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Content Rating: MA

NeuroCandy Scale: 🍬🍬🍬🍬

Rating: ⭐

Summary from the Sally Thorne website:

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

Unfortunately The Hating Game did not make it high on the list of rom coms I like. The first issue I had was early in the book with its lack of effective exposition. While listening I could follow the setup of the novel easily, but the setup was so fast I felt like I got whiplash from how quickly I was thrown into the rest of the story. I didn’t even register the transition from the exposition to the body of the story.

I think one of my biggest issues with this one was that the “enemies” part of the enemies to lovers trope was established before the novel started, so I barely got to see any of the delicious tension that normally comes from this trope. The switch from enemies to lovers starts almost immediately and it was jarring to be thrown into the flirtation so quickly. I was like “You guys are supposed to hate each other, right?” because I feel like I barely got to see any of it. If I had been reading a physical copy instead of listening to the audiobook, I would’ve wondered if my copy was missing pages from the beginning.

This book is advertised as an office romance and a lot of the story does take place in the office, but there wasn’t a single scene of actual work getting done in the entire book (at least that I remember) which was infuriating.

The protagonist, Lucy, went into the publishing industry for all the reasons I want to go into publishing one day. My dream career is in publishing and I was reading this woman living my dream when she did not deserve it. She hardly seemed to care about her job in publishing outside of the book’s explanation for why she went into it. She doesn’t even work while she’s in the office; she’s too busy hating Josh and snooping in Josh’s desk and staring at Josh. She’s in her career for all the right reasons and yet I don’t see her doing any work.

“Books were, and always would be, something a little magic and something to respect.”

All my fellow rom-com readers know how overused the “I’m sooo tiny” trope is in these books, but my God, this book was the biggest offender of them all. Did you know Lucy is exactly five feet tall? Don’t worry, you’ll definitely remember it by the time you finish the book because she literally never shuts up about being sooo small.

Liking miniature smurf figurines is also apparently Lucy’s only personality trait (aside from being sooo little). So, she’s quirky because she’s sooo microscopic and… likes smurfs? Okay.

(Also, if you’re annoyed by me mentioning how Lucy is sooo miniscule as many times as I have, welcome to this book.)

“Stop calling me Shortcake.”

“Watching you pretend to hate that nickname is the best part of my day.”

Lucy is also super judgmental, which isn’t really a good look, and is incredibly insecure about people she thinks are more attractive than her. She uses people’s appearance to look down on them, calling her boss “Fat Little Dick” on the regular. Sure, he’s the worst, but maybe insult his blatant misogyny using that as leverage instead of his weight? Along with this, she also thinks that fishnet stockings + eye makeup = prostitute. They’re just tights, dude, and what would it matter anyway? Either way, if Lucy finds fishnets to be so trashy, why is she wearing them? Why is she exempt? Because she’s sooo petite (sorry, had to throw one more in there) so she can pull anything off without being trashy like everyone else? Ugh.

Sally Thorne seemed to face the issue that she had so many ideas and not enough book space to effectively use them all. The novel was extremely fast-paced and unfortunately the amount of events going on with the quick transitions made it feel pretty disjointed. I usually love a good wedding scene, but I think I've seen this film before... and this one wasn't executed nearly as well.

I’m a standalone queen– after my Court of Thorns and Roses marathon, I decided I’m not ready to commit to another series yet and prefer one-and-done books (for now), but I think The Hating Game would have benefitted from being a duo set. This way there would be more room to give the readers more “enemies” content and more room to bring all of Thorne’s ideas to fruition with better pacing instead of cramming them all into one book.

Even the good parts of the book didn’t really do enough for me to make the parts I didn’t like worth it. There was just so much going on that the good parts didn’t have any impact. The paintball scene, Lucy’s sickness, both apartment scenes, wedding scene, all of those were just okay. They didn’t really make me feel any kind of way.

Spoilers

Also, if I went to a dude’s house and found out that when he designed his room he painted it the exact color of my eyes on purpose it would be an immediate restraining order. Especially if it were a situationship rather than a real relationship and we hadn’t even started getting along until, like, three weeks ago.

Usually I wouldn’t include movie adaptations on my reviews for books, but this is my blog so I do what I want. The Hating Game translated surprisingly well to the screen and I think it was meant to be a rom-com movie rather than a rom-com novel. Most things that I hated about the book weren’t included in the movie, which made for a great popcorn movie. Total neuro-candy.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend The Hating Game as a novel, I actually really liked it as a movie. We even added the movie to our annual Christmas movie binge list since the movie changed the time of year to winter, which was a great move.

“Here’s a fact. Hating someone is exhausting.”

Indeed. Hating someone is exhausting. So is hating a book, and I was not a fan of this one. I am ready to lay it to rest.

So, overall, The Hating Game was a bust for me. There was just too much happening with so little impact and too many scenes I didn’t like to make it worth the read. I really try to find positive things in books I like, and maybe I’m just super jaded about this one for some reason, but there are other rom-coms out there that I would recommend first.