A fine line between love and hate: my thoughts on The Hating Game

The Hating Game is a witty and sexy workplace romance that wastes no time in getting down and dirty. Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman have never seen eye to eye. Their relationship has been rocky from the beginning–Lucy is convinced that Joshua hates her. When a promotion to become COO of their publishing company becomes available, the competition between the two rivals turns fierce and tensions are high. As they go head to head for the promotion, Lucy starts to realize that the line between hate and love is very thin.

I loved the romance in this novel. It was funny and I loved watching it develop from a lust/hate fueled rivalry to a joyful relationship to truly envy. I wouldn’t call this a true enemies to lovers love story, but it’s pretty close. Lucy and Joshua were both so lovable and I was rooting so hard for them from the beginning, even when they hated each other. Sally Thorne toes a fine line between love and hate. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference in this book. The one thing that connects both of these characters is passion–for their work and for each other. That’s what makes this book so enjoyable to read. You can almost feel the passion coming off of the page. It is honestly incredible.

Now for the spice. There is a lot of sexual tension in this book. It’s almost unbearable at points, especially because the actual sex doesn’t really happen until towards the end. It’s a bit of a slow burn romance. Sally Thorne really makes you work for it. And it is so worth it. Sometimes that dialogue was a little off, but overall the spice is decent. (Or perhaps INdecent) This book gets 🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers from me, just because the sometimes the dialogue was awkward and also because there isn’t a lot of volume to the spice. It is very much quality over quantity with this novel.

I didn’t love the prose in this novel. It felt really awkward at times and it was kind of a hello fellow youths moment, if that makes sense. I believe that the phrase “Le sigh” was used at some point. Cringe. Usually I’m all for using memes, but this one was just particularly awkward and out of place. There were also a couple of pieces of dialogue during the spicy parts that really took me out of the story, which was unfortunate. Just the whole unwieldy-ness of it all just made me take a step back and prevented me from really getting lost in the story.

Overall I’m going to give this book ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars. This had everything it needed to be a 5 star romance. I loved the relationship between the characters and their story. I loved watching Lucy slowly come to realize that Joshua really loved her all along. I just wish that the prose was a little less awkward and cringey. It’s such a small thing, but it really took me out of the story at times, and I won’t say it ruined the experience, but it did make it less enjoyable.

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