The Hating Game: A Novel

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We love the r-word being used in the context of Josh telling Lucy he’s loved her since the moment he saw her.

Unlike Lucy, he doesn't try to make friends with everyone, and the reason for his standoffishness is revealed later. When a chance appears at a promotion that would put one in charge of the other, their simmering tension boils over and romance ensues because, as Ms Thorne puts on the very first pages of this book, there’s a fine line between love and hate, which is a line I used to torment a set of romantic nemeses back in grade school but has no business being a maxim by which to conduct adult relationships. Instead, in its place, the strength of a hero now is evident by how well he can hold back the hair of a heroine as she is vomiting, he lovingly ensures that she doesn’t get masticated carrot bits in her wispy tendrils that he tucks gently behind her ears as she hurls whilst tingeing the air with acrid bilious smells. I have to say that his over-protectiveness and jealousy did annoy me, and I think he snapped wayyy too easily at times, but I actually did quite like his character. I devoured the book within one evening the first time I read it, staying up until 4am to finish it - I completely and utterly fell in love with Joshua the more I learned about him.Once, I did, the pace definitely picked up and I was invested in the outcome and the characters’ lives/relationship.

In the beginning, Josh is seen as an emotionally stunted character, but as we make headway in the book, we can see that there’s more to Josh. Trapped in a shared office together forty (ok, fifty or sixty) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship.It’s a weird bag of “we’re the only people who can take each other’s shit” which only leads me to believe that they’re both assholes.

Sally Thorne has set herself apart from many of the authors I read and has fast become one of my favourites and I am exceedingly excited to see what she will bring to the table next. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, he’s also rich, for an injection of glamour and hopefully some expensive parting gifts for our heroine once she figures out she needs to dump the asshole. First, she thinks the investigators will "assume" she is a stripper because of things she's wearing. More bizarre quotes: "His sweat smells like rainwater and cedar, leaving a faint rosemary-pine tingle in my nostrils. It becomes flagrantly obvious very early on in the story that Josh is not the hard-faced person he makes himself out to be and when a surprising, unexpected (and don't forget steamy) kiss occurs between the pair the dynamic of the couple completely shifts and we're thrown into what feels like an alternate universe where we find that Joshua Templeman's hard exterior has all along been protecting the softest of centres.When I think of his hand on the back of my thigh, I have to reach down and feel where his fingers spread. Of course, anyone can like what they like but it genuinely astounds me that everyone seems so in love with Josh/their relationship when it seems so obviously toxic.

The banter between the characters was overall pretty good, and some of the things that they would say were actually unexpected and unguarded.It is her debut novel that has sold in over twenty-five countries and is being made into a major motion picture, directed by Peter Hutchings and starring Lucy Hale and Austin Stowell. Her boss is not a nice person, he is sexist and misogynistic, and clearly, Lucy doesn’t think Josh is a nice person either, this is lazy and damaging writing. It would have been nice to have read about a different type of female publishing employee, but I didn’t mind this too much. It also showed there is more to him than it appeared and once his story was revealed, I loved him even more.