The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
Title: The Hating Game
Author: Sally Thorne
Published: 2016
Rating: ★★★★★
“I suppose a nuclear bomb has one red button, and that doesn’t take long to press.”
The Hating Game follows Lucy Hutton, a small but mighty corporate assistant at a publishing house that has recently merged with a rival business. Rivalry actually runs very deep here; the co-CEOs despise each other and this feeling trickles down to the assistants, Lucy and her counterpart Joshua Templeman. They spend their days playing malevolent mind games with each other, seeing who can make whom more upset and rage-filled. While there is potent loathing on the surface of this relationship, what the reader comes to discover eventually (or, possibly, within the first chapter) is that there may not be so much hating going on here after all.
As an early disclaimer, I’m going to out myself as a newbie to the romance-novel world. Truthfully, this was never a genre I was particularly drawn to; I spent my younger reading years delving into macabre writing and since then have kept away from romance books for no reason other than I always had something else to read. But oh. My. God. This BOOK.
My new Booktube obsession, Noelle Gallagher, has recommended The Hating Game up and down in several of her videos (Check out her site here) and since I am now taking her word as gospel, this book was swiftly added to my TBR. This is my very first book review on my brand-new site, so I thought it only fitting that I kick it off with a five-star-earner. What an addictive, fantastic, sexy read. It had me yelling at the characters like I was in a theater for a horror movie. Don’t do that! Why are you doing that?? You’re being SO OBVIOUS.
There is a steadiness to Thorne’s story; a moderate tempo that never drags but always lets you think something is going to happen. You’ll feel that you’re reaching an apex, and then she makes you hold out for another chapter. This climb to our (figurative, and I suppose, literal) climax is part of what makes this book so difficult to put down. You’re always waiting for the other shoe. I was glad for the length being a bit longer than what I would have expected by my extremely lacking romance-novel knowledge, because I didn’t want it to end. I could read this book happily until I, too, get a desk job and spend my days hate-staring at a coworker.
Thorne’s novel is seamless in its writing; characters swim from one event to the next in such a way that you’ve torn through several chapters before you knew what hit you. Her characters are witty, and their clever back-and-forth quips are what we all wish for in a workplace conversation.
This book taught me something about the saccharine-sweet romance novel: I need more of them. Like, immediately. Long has it been since I’ve verbally berated the characters in a novel in a haze of frustration that they would not behave at my whim. This book was fully enveloping and much deserving of each one of Noelle Gallagher’s many, many recommendations.
