August 2022 review of The Hating Game
The Hating game
Written by Sally Thorne
About from Goodreads.com
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
Review
I have no clue where to start with all the issues I have with this book. With all of the amazing reviews I thought this book was going to be amazing but, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
My issues with this book are; that books will usually take me at most three days to read (unless I’m in a book club, then I go the same pace as the others) and this one has taken a lot longer because I just couldn’t read it all the way though so I would read a few chapters then get annoyed so I would switch to a new book.
Secondly, the majority of the characters are extremely flat. The main character Lucy is horrible and treats others horribly, no wonder she doesn't have any friends in the book. Here is an example of what she says about others “Sonja Rutherford, probably. That scary lady in the mailroom that looks like an albino Morticia Addams” I have no clue as to how people in this book label her as a kind person, she is a fat phobic and racist and all and all an extremely toxic person. I got really annoyed with how her height of 5 feet was used as a character trait. It’s not. Joshua was actually sort of enjoyable ,at the beginning I hated him because he seemed bland and toxic like Lucy but, later in the book you see that he is a sweetheart.
Another issue I had with the romance, it wasn’t gradual it came out of nowhere, which was extremely annoying. Like where is the slow build? Fourthly, This book was also supposed to have humor and I didn’t find anything funny about this book, reading reviews on Goodreads it seems like I am not the only one to think this.
Lastly, I feel as if this book is telling people that toxic relationships are okay and they are trying to normalize abuse, which is NEVER okay. Maybe that is a normal thing with enemies to lovers, I do not know since this is the first time I have ever read one. If this is the norm then, I just found my least favorite trope.
Even though for the most part I didn’t enjoy this book, a few parts were sorta enjoyable but it took a long time to get to them. One of the enjoyable parts was the last few chapters. They even had me smiling a little bit. Honestly the few part I did enjoy saved this book as well as Joshua from being a one star.
Disliked
Characters are sorta flat
Couldn’t read it fully though. Had to keep coming back to this book to finish it
Didn’t really catch my interest only a few parts did
Absolutely HATED the main character, she had no redeeming qualities
Quotes I love
None
2/5 ⭐️
Info
Trigger warning- ableism, bullying, emotional abuse, SA, fat phobia, slut shaming, body shaming
Spice level- 3/ 5 🌶
Numbers of pages- 365 (paperback)
Publish date-Aug 2016
Awards-Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Mainstream Fiction (2016), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Romance (2016)
Genres- Romance, Chick lit, Humor
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