The Hating Game

by Sally Thorne

[Kait ✨]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. ♥︎ Let me count the ways:

1/ Surface level, it is a super fun rom com type of novel about two assistants to the co-CEOs who are nemeses. I love me some slow burn hate-to-love and Thorne really delivers. Like, these characters hate each other so much there are some strangling fantasies. I loved it.

2/ They work at a publishing company. (!!!) I love seeing my workplace represented in books, movies, TV, etc. even if they don’t get it quite right, but I think Thorne did a fairly accurate job of representing a publishing company and what I see as the two “types” in publishing (corporate vs. indie).

3/ There is way more to the plot than the romance. The book is also very much about Lucy’s journey of discovering what she really wants and what she’s capable of in life. She talks about the easiness and simultaneous difficulty of going home—of the loneliness and homesickness she feels having moved away from her family and her childhood home, but also of the sense of giving up she imagines she would feel if she had to go home. Home is easy but it is also a symptom of Lucy giving up on her dreams and her independence.

4/ Nobody is perfect in this novel, and mistakes are acknowledged. For example, there’s recognition by Josh that his behaviour towards Lucy requires an apology and an explanation and he gives that. But he also doesn’t beat it to death and there’s a comfortableness between them that makes the “make up” feel realistic and uncontrived.

I’ve read a few complaints about lack of setting which didn’t bother me; I imagined the city as something like Ottawa or Boston (probably because I didn’t know the author was Australian until after I’d read it). There are definitely tropes in this novel, but I feel it’s an example of how much these tropes can shine and why we love them—Thorne just nails the funny romance, here.

I just loved this—it’s a funny and pretty sexy romance but it also really made me feel a LOT unexpectedly about what’s it like to be a twenty-something woman today trying to make it in the world. All the love and stars for this book, and I will be running out to buy Thorne’s next book as soon as I can get it.