The Hating Game

by Sally Thorne

August 9, 2016 · William Morrow Paperbacks

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This book might be receiving a lot of attention and the reason is, it’s pretty wonderful. I can’t go back to my copy for quotes for this review because I end up reading it again and I already lost too much time and sleep trying to make myself stop reading it.

Lucy Hutton is the executive assistant to one of the co-CEOs of a recently merged publishing company. Her nemesis and office mate, Joshua Templeman, is the assistant to the other CEO. If the merger between the two houses was somewhat hostile, that negativity is amplified and honed to terrible sharpness in every word Josh and Lucy speak to one another. They deliberately try to annoy each other, from mirroring the other person’s gestures to staring and trading barbs until someone looks away or laughs. Every sentence and every moment is an opportunity to score points off one another, and Lucy isn’t sure how to stop the competition except to win – and there’s no finish line. Just another work day.

Then a promotional opportunity is announced, and they both want it. They’re already so experienced at competing with one another, this level of Game On is the beginning and the end for them. They have a goal, a finish line placed in front of them to finally end the daily combat. Then, after one kiss in an elevator, everything changes. The stakes become much higher, and everything between them becomes much more complicated.

This is a LOT of my catnip. A LOT. Like, Costco-sized portions, but from the way back of Costco where the things you buy require a forklift. YES. THAT MUCH CATNIP. A CATNIP FORKLIFT IS NEEDED IN AISLE SIX.

Here, have a list:

1. There is so much humor, so much emotion. The story is told from Lucy’s point of view, and she’s adorably wonderful. She struggles with her height, because she’s very petite, and she struggles with people taking her seriously, and she keeps trying anyway because she refuses to give up on anything she’s determined to do.
2. The book is nonstop dialogue that has its own energy. I could probably power the houses on my street if that energy were harnessed. Forget solar power; this book has dialogue power.
3.  Josh has that intoxicating Pride & Prejudice vibe of, ‘I have impressively strong feelings that I am hiding behind a veneer of aloof crankiness, and I’m 99% skilled at making sure you have no clue about any of my struggles.’
4. Oh, so much of my personal favorite catnip on both sides of this couple, only dialed up to 11: I don’t want to like you, I don’t want to like you, I can’t stop thinking about your hair/ your shirt/ your lipstick and DAMMIT ALL TO HELL. 
5. The contrasts between Josh and Lucy are reflected not just in their personalities, but in the way they dress, and the way they manage their respective jobs, and in the work culture of the two companies that just merged. There is a contrast of leadership styles as well – caring, personable, and effective vs. aloof, prickly, and effective. There’s the artistic side and the objective, analytical side, and even though they’re both determined to win their competition, I as the reader know that no one side can effectively and decisively win that battle – which creates still more tension.
6. SO MUCH TENSION. DELICIOUS FLAVORFUL TENSION.
7. Everything is coded. There’s smoldering emotional agony hidden and revealed in a few words, and painful personal history concealed in a gesture. You will likely want to go back and read it again once all the codes have been solved and every secret revealed, because you’ll probably see more the second time through. Yes, I did, and yes, I did.
8. LAYERS. YUMMY EMOTIONAL LAYERS. PAUL HOLLYWOOD SAYS THESE LAYERS ARE PERFECTLY BAKED. MARY BERRY SAYS THEY ARE SCRUMMY.
9. Josh has met his competitive match, and he knows it. He says so, a few times in different ways, but doesn’t trust himself completely and gets in his own way. Lucy has met her match, but doesn’t fully trust herself, either – for entirely different reasons. Then they begin to learn to trust each other after building up a pile of reasons they shouldn’t.
10. Both Lucy and Josh have very similar problems and issues, and they’ve hidden them under very different veneers. They’re spinning magnets, basically, or maybe spinning office chairs, attracting and repelling each other at the same time, turning and turning around one another, unable to stop.

Basically, they don’t like each other, but they really like each other.

There’s a lot going on with mirrors, too. There’s the reflective surfaces of the office, the way everything is decorated in chrome, glass, and tile that reflects everything repeatedly, and the way Lucy and Josh mirror one another in an effort to annoy each other. There are mirrors that reflect who they project into the world, and mirrors that reflect who they really are, and I deeply, deeply love stories that explore the tension and reconciliation between the image of who the characters want people to believe they are, and who they really are inside. The tension in the differences between appearance and reality, aggressive and assertive, artistic and analytical, creative and clinical, objective and subjective, expectation and desire, all fold into one another intricately and repeatedly in this story, and there is so much to explore. It’s freaking delicious.

So why no A? Why no squee cannon?

Ableist and offensive language choices. Every time I encountered an example, my buoyant, sparkly joy would deflate. There aren’t many, but when they appear, they stuck pins in my elation, to the point where I grew frustrated with the language of the book itself. The writing is superb and strong and elegant and hilarious except for that one problem, a handful of words which could have been easily fixed, and the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

For example, there’s one line, late in the book:

In the worst, most ill-conceived and socially retarded way possible.

I have been chasing my tail about this for hours now. Am I being too sensitive and critical? Am I overestimating awareness of how deeply hurtful and offensive “retarded” is when one is not talking about musical tempo or scientific rates of deceleration? I know I’m not the only one bothered by that word, and by some other words in this text, but maybe my estimation of whether it should be used (answer: not ever) and my expectation that it should have been addressed is overly demanding.

Regardless of my potentially inaccurate measurements, this is my review and therefore about my reaction. And it pissed me off, and left me with the feeling that someone, SOMEONE should have known better. I don’t know who or when because a LOT of people go into the process of making one book. But this could have been fixed easily with all these other words that are not going to hurt, that don’t have so much pain attached to them – which is ironic considering how much of the power of this book is built of word choices, with barbs and arrows contained inside compliments and banalities, and vice versa.

Thus, no squee cannon, and no vowel.

Nearly everyone I’ve recommended this book to since reading it has received a caveat about the language, and I have to put one here, too. The language choices in this story present a different level of obstacle for every reader, so I can’t predict how it might affect you, but I want to give ample warning nonetheless.

Beyond that, this book is terrible fun to read. I loved Lucy, and I loved Josh, and I loved that so much of this story is dialogue. I LOVE DIALOGUE. SO MUCH TALKING, and so much conversation between people who love words, and games, and competition.

It is not much fun to say, “I really liked this book, but…” or “I loved this story except there is this one thing I need to tell you….” I wanted this to be an effervescent explosion of how much I enjoyed it, how much I couldn’t get enough of Lucy’s internal monologue and the crackling conversations she had with Josh, of how the tension between them would reach a breaking point and then restart without it being contrived, of how much is revealed at the end and how tempting it is to go back and read the book again once all the clues and tiny signals are revealed.

I genuinely loved this story, and these characters. There’s tension and energy in every word, and I wanted them to figure out their problems so they could be together, even though the part where they were figuring out how to reconcile those problems was the most delicious, so I didn’t want it to end. If your reading catnip, like mine, includes a blend of dialogue that crackles with intensity and emotion, cranky, stoic heroes with hidden, squishy depths, and vivid, self-assured heroines who take exactly zero crap from said hero, you should find yourself a copy of this book.

The Hating Game was wonderful.

It has dialogue so exciting and funny I wanted to happily feast on it like Lucy feasts on every meal she has.

It has emotional moments so poignant and powerful I teared up several times, especially when Josh is trying not to reveal any of the things he’s feeling and mostly succeeding at tucking his true self behind his over-starched shirts and predictably cold facade.

It was nearly everything I love about contemporary romantic comedy and almost everything I adore in a good romance.