[Book Review] The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

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.

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 tw: cutting/self harm is mentioned quickly in passing

Attempting to read romance books every February for the last couple years now hasn't really been a successful experience for me overall. I always try to pick up a few that maybe were easy to grab off my kindle or books I had for a while I never got around to and it always became a disappointment. So this year I decided I'd request a few from my library I know got good reviews and that way I can give myself a better chance of not only finding good romance books but also have a good February when it comes to reading. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne has been everywhere across all my social media timelines for about a year now and finally I've decided to pick it up. And I have mixed feelings. 

"Hating someone feels disturbingly similar to being in love with them."

Let's jump into the characters, our two main love interests are Lucy and Josh but we are following Lucy the entire time. I enjoy Lucy's character. She's optimistic, bubbly, so much of a people person it's a flaw of hers. Overall I related to her and I enjoyed her for the most part. There are some stuff I dislike about her inner thoughts, which I'll get to in a second because it's going to be a long tangent probably. Lucy's love interest, Josh, is also a really great character. Because we are in Lucy's head for all of the book, the beginning of the story paints Josh as a cold hardass who never smiles or seems to have any fun. When we learn that Josh is actually a super sensitive soft guy who is playing a role I started really liking him. We learn this early on too, which is great because I feel like we get to know big chunks the real Josh pretty quickly which I think makes the romance so much better. We see him feel guilt pretty quickly for saying something that hurts Lucy's feelings and he apologizes as soon as he can. I think it's honestly in that moment I started liking him. They have amazing chemistry right off the bat and their witty bickering/banter is really funny. Most readers are going to pick up this book for the romance, because that's the genre it's in, and it's the best part of the book.

However, I do have a pretty big issue with this book as a whole, which is why it's 3 "leaf" rating and not a 4.5 like I honestly feel like it would have gotten without the part I disliked. Which is all the problematic language in this book. There are too many examples to excuse it as a tasteless mistake. A lot of the examples do only happen in Lucy's thoughts and so no one can call her out on it. It's supposed to be funny when it's just offensive and harmful. 

The good thing is unless I missed some, the ones I am about to list are the only ones in the book. So it isn't frequent or all the time (other than one in particular, which I'll point out when I get to it). Which is why when it happens it's so jarring. It seems to come out of no where and often times feels to have some real vitriol behind the words. In the first example, is one of the ways Lucy describes her signature red lipstick that she wears everyday. She has a lot of ways to describe it, rose red, flamethrower red, strawberry red, etc. However, one that stood out as not okay was "slit-wrists" red and holy crap is that offensive and completely out of place for a romcom. I don't have self harm triggers but people who do don't need to be reading stuff like that when they're supposed to be reading a cute office romance story. One of the really big ones is when Lucy makes fun of disabled people, essentially calling them ugly while also body shaming, which comes back later. She's complaining about how Josh doesn't deserve to be as attractive as he is basically because his personally doesn't match, and then she says: "I wish I could say he's ugly. He should be a short, fat troll, with a cleft palate and watery eyes. A limping hunchback. Warts and zits. Yellow-cheese teeth and onion sweat." From that sentence alone she's making fun of people with cleft palates, fat people, disabled people, and just overall people who are not "conventionally pretty" by society's standards. Body shaming people seems to be a big thing with Lucy and she often uses fat as an insult. At one point it's used in the same context as "sleazy toad" so she isn't using it as a body descriptor but a negative thing, something to be ashamed of. She refers to Josh's boss as "Fat Little Dick" a lot and it's the thing that pops up the most frequently. To the point where it's honestly annoying and insulting. What really sucks is every single insulting thing that is in this book could have been written differently and the end message/result would have been exactly the same. And I would have probably given this book a perfect or near perfect review. 

"I hope it's not too forward of me to say, but your eyes are incredible, Lucy. I die when you blink."

Now, that is a lot of negatives, at least for me. And I feel like 3.5 is till super generous. However, when the romance was good (which is like 99% of the time) it's so so good. It's one of the best romance plots I've read. Granted I am not super experienced in romance but that is because I was constantly picking up bad ones. I could have easily given this book 4.5-5 "leafs" for the romance alone because it was that good. The gradual build up of their tension, their amazing chemistry right away, the flirting and teasing, and the plot itself making both characters better characters. There was only one time in the romance aspect of the story I felt a red flag go up with Josh and that was his weird territorial possessiveness when it came to Lucy being friends with Danny. It was never too much or violent or anything. Josh is more of the pout and sulk type. However, it is brief and called out by Lucy so they explore why he's jealous. It was addressed and I think helped get to know Josh more. 

So if you're looking for a good romance book I think this is a great one to pick up but know that there is a few times where things are inappropriate and problematic. I think it's important to acknowledge them because they shouldn't have been  in the book to start with, but it's also easy to still enjoy the majority of the story. I am honestly surprised even in 2016 this book got published with that much body shaming and I am surprised more people aren't talking about some of the word choices in this book in their reviews. Despite the fact that it was published in 2016, I am not allowing this kind of language and body shaming attitude in my life in 2019. Although I am disappointed in those aspects of the story I truly loved everything about the romance. I was laughing so much while reading and honestly a bit swoon-y or at least charmed by the way Lucy and  Josh interacted with each other. That is the reason why I will give Sally Thorne another try and maybe pick up another one of her books. However, if this becomes an on going thing I will have to just be done with her books, unfortunately. 

"I wanted you here because I always want you with me."

Overall, I'd say if you're interested you should give it a shot. I could have easily rated and reviewed this book with praise and focused only on the romance because that is the genre this book falls into. However, I feel like that i not the kind of reviewer I am. I think it would be unfair to anyone who picks up this book because of my review because most of the problematic stuff being said could definitely hurt someone. Especially if it seems to happen out of nowhere. I just hope that the author doesn't have the same kind of thoughts Lucy seems to have. I guess we will see when I pick up another on of Thorne's books. 

Thanks for reading!