The Hating Game by Sally Thorne: Three Stars, One Black Dress, and a Lot of Feelings

Enemies-to-lovers is one of the most reliable setups in romance, but it only works when both people are fighting something real. Sally Thorne's debut novel gets that right. Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman are executive assistants to the co-CEOs of Bexley & Gamin Publishing, a freshly merged company where two very different work cultures are forced to share one gleaming chrome-and-glass office. Lucy is sunshine and vintage dresses. Josh is color-coded shirts and judgmental eyebrows. Neither of them smiles at the other. One of them takes it personally.

That's the whole game, really. Lucy decides on day one that Josh is her enemy, largely because he didn't smile back when she introduced herself. What follows is a series of escalating psychological warfare rituals: the staring game, the mirror game, the HR game, competitive coffee break timing. Jeanette from HR is earning every cent of her paycheck. When both of them are up for the same promotion and one of them will have to either report to the winner or quit, the stakes get personal fast.

What makes this work is the banter. Thorne writes dialogue that actually crackles. Josh tells Lucy her apartment smells like cat food. Lucy tells Josh his uncle Satan must not have had anything available in her price range. The insults are specific and funny, and underneath them you can feel two people who are paying very close attention to each other.

The deeper story is about two lonely people who have organized their lives around work because they don't have much else. Lucy has her Smurf collection, her strawberry farmer parents, and one friend who got laid off. Josh has his color-coded shirts, a family of surgeons who view his career as a personal failure, and complicated history that surfaces at his brother's wedding. When they're forced to be vulnerable with each other, the tension shifts from funny to genuinely affecting.

The book stays in Lucy's head the entire time, which is both its biggest strength and its most frustrating limitation. You're fully inside her voice, her humor, her spiral of denial. But Josh is so opaque for so long that the payoff requires some patience. His mom knew about Lucy from day one. He'd been quietly reading her mother's strawberry blog. He sent the roses. The details are sweet, but you have to piece them together from the outside.

The book closes at a turning point rather than a full resolution. You know where their hearts are, but some loose ends stay loose. Readers who want a tidy wrap-up may find it abrupt. Readers who are fine sitting with the feeling will probably love it.

Who should read it:

• If you want slow burn tension that actually pays off
• If sharp, funny dialogue is your main criteria for a good romance
• If you like your book boyfriend difficult but secretly devoted

Who should skip it:

• If you need a dual perspective to stay invested
• If the grumpy/sunshine dynamic isn't your thing
• If you want more than two fleshed-out characters

Podcast Episode

In this episode we're talking about whether the enemies-to-lovers formula actually earned it here, Josh's shirt rotation schedule, the black dress scene, and why none of us could picture that chrome-and-glass office. Did the book stick the landing? Does Katya, a self-described enemies-to-lovers skeptic, buy it? What would Josh's POV have looked like? We have opinions.

The Hating Game book episode is up now on your favorite podcast app. Links in the sidebar or find all our platforms here: https://linktr.ee/chapteronesceneone. Come back next week when we talk about the 2021 movie starring Lucy Hale and Austin Stowell.

If you liked The Hating Game and want more:

• Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren 
• The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren 
• Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin 
• Beach Read by Emily Henry 
• People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry 
• The Roommate by Rosie Danan 
• One Day in December by Josie Silver