The Book
The Author:
What It’s About:
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman, two co-workers, hate each other and it is no secret. Not to each other, not to their other co-workers, and definitely not to Jeanette from HR, who’s had to hear endless complaints from both of them over the year that their publishing companies merged together. It isn’t all that surprising, though. While Joshua’s broody, uptight, and cold, Lucy is bright, quirky, and outgoing. Furthermore, the two executive assistants to the co-CEO’s have made their hatred for each other a daily game where they try to see who can one up each other with their jabs and childish games.
It all comes to a head when they’re both up for the same promotion as Chief of Operations. This could make it or break it for Lucy in terms of whether or not she’ll continue working at the company. It’s important to her because she’s always dreamed of working in publishing. But then things start to change between her and Joshua, their hatred reaching a boiling point and tipping toward a whole other realm. It leads Lucy to realize that maybe she doesn’t really hate Joshua and maybe Joshua doesn’t really hate her.
Thoughts:
The old enemies to lovers trope will never get old. Which is why I was so interested in reading this book. There were countless recommendations and cute Tumblr edits that convinced me to give it a shot. And boy, did it live up to its word.
There were many things I loved about this book. It was easy to read! The characters were interesting and funny! And it filled my heart with this light, fluttering feeling, as though I was the one falling in love rather than the characters. Enemies to lovers is a hard trope to do. Most of the time the writer rushes the falling in love part, or the transition into not hating each other doesn’t seem gradual enough. It’s difficult, but there have been few times where I’ve read it just right, and this was one of them.
Lucy is a riot. She’s so funny, adorable, and a great protagonist. Joshua, despite initially being portrayed as an asshole, redeemed himself as we found out more about him. He was a dreamy love interest, from his way of life to his inner thoughts. And despite the story being told in Lucy’s point of view, the reader was able to understand a lot of what Joshua was feeling and thinking, which I loved. So often I’m left wondering what the other characters are up to, but Thorne really did a great job in developing her characters and giving them a backstory that didn’t seem out of left field or completely ridiculous.
I could read this book over and over again and never tire of the way Lucy and Joshua fell into each other. The dialogues were memorable! The scenes were so good you couldn’t put the book down! It’s the perfect read for anyone who loves a good romance or chick lit novel.
FTS Rating:
10/10
Sally Thorne lives in Canberra, Australia, and spends her days writing funding submissions and drafting contracts (yawn!) so it’s not surprising that after hours she climbs into colorful fictional worlds of her own creation. The Hating Game is her first novel. Follow her on twitter at @sally__thorne.
