The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
Published August 9, 2016
Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.
2) A person’s undoing
3) Joshua Templeman
Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She’s charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.
Trapped in a shared office together 40 (OK, 50 or 60) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking.
If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she’s got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth-shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong.
Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn’t hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.
I’ve read this book 5 times since last year, and I am a woman obsessed. I literally re-read this all the time because it’s just SO GOOD. If every contemporary romance was written this way, I’d be reading romance exclusively. And I’m like also expecting this to be picked up for the most amazing rom-com movie ever created because I don’t think I could live in this world if Lucy and Josh don’t come to life EVEN MORE somehow.
Lucy and Josh hate each other, they work as exec assistants to their respective co-CEOs of the publishing house they work for and are both fighting for the same promotion. Josh is pretty stern and unyielding while Lucy is a people pleaser…she bends over backwards a bit too much to please people if you ask me (this coming from a fellow people pleaser…). After a kiss in the elevator and a company outing, Lucy and Josh begin to get closer throughout the book.
The one thing that I think I love the most about this book is that Josh has all these layers that kind of get stripped away one by one as you read on which is SO satisfying and makes him such a great character because you continue to learn more and more about him since he’s so shut off while Lucy is so open. It makes for a great dynamic between the two of them that I can’t get enough of.
This book is funny, thoughtful, and pulled on my heartstrings a bit at times (especially when Josh actually showed emotion). I can’t express how much I want all of you to read this book, because it’s one I keep going back to time and time again when I can’t think of anything else to read because it satisfies my that much.
4/5 Strawberries
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