Sally Thorne: Hating Game (2016, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)
English language
Published Jan. 13, 2016 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
It's the oldest story. The guy and the girl are archenemies and then they get to spend more time together, fall in love, and then trouble brews... Sally Thorne makes it hilarious and steamy. Good one to kill time and much better than the movie.
I started reading The Hating Game because the movie recently came out and reviews suggested reading the book first. The movie has a lot to live up to as The Hating Game in book form kept my attention for long stretches and earned lots of smiles and a few laughs along the way.
I think this is my first time reading a "rom-com" novel. I'm probably not hooked on the genre but I did enjoyed reading this book.
This must be the lovechild of a pulp-novel and 50 shades. However, I read it in an afternoon, so there must have been something enjoyable.
I needed another romance, and this one keeps popping up.. but geez, did I feel mixed about it throughout. The power dynamics and other issues are not responsibly used and it just didn’t feel good to read. Unlike my feminist romances (Guilory, Cole, Hoang and more), I was not left wanting more of these characters, in fact I was annoyed by them. Furthermore, there was a main plot point that I think anyone over 12 could have seen coming miles away, but the book seemed to think it was clever. Eh.
Such a fun book, it's funny and sexy and I loved spending time with the characters. Lucy Parker's Act Like It was my fave contemporary romance book in 2016 and I think I liked this one just as much. I see Sally Thorne has a book coming out in 2017, I'm looking forward to seeing what that's like.
Everyone who recommended this book has commented on how laugh-out-loud funny it is, and has called it a romantic comedy. I actually didn't find much funny in this book, and at times cried my way through it. To be fair though, I was likely riding high on my monthly emotional/hormonal rollercoaster. That being said, I did enjoy this book, I just didn't think it was screamingly funny.
Truly an enemies to lovers story, there were times that it was hard to see how Thorne was going to make these two fall in love. For more than half of the book, they only snipe at each other, and while we eventually find out why they act the way they do towards each other (it's more than just hate/love), at times the bickering could be tiring. There was also something about the author's writing style that I found a bit standoffish. I …
Everyone who recommended this book has commented on how laugh-out-loud funny it is, and has called it a romantic comedy. I actually didn't find much funny in this book, and at times cried my way through it. To be fair though, I was likely riding high on my monthly emotional/hormonal rollercoaster. That being said, I did enjoy this book, I just didn't think it was screamingly funny.
Truly an enemies to lovers story, there were times that it was hard to see how Thorne was going to make these two fall in love. For more than half of the book, they only snipe at each other, and while we eventually find out why they act the way they do towards each other (it's more than just hate/love), at times the bickering could be tiring. There was also something about the author's writing style that I found a bit standoffish. I liken her style to the movie Election with Reese Witherspoon or Butter with Jennifer Garner. People do and say outlandish things and no one bats an eye. That's what happens here and it's hard to both take it seriously, and also laugh at what's going on. This writing style makes it hard to warm up to any of the characters.
I also found it odd that there was almost zero place setting/world building. I have no idea where this book was set; I thought it was New York, perhaps because of the book publishing aspect, but if it was indeed set in New York, then it was a New York the author has never step foot in. So I convinced myself the book took place in some kind of big, but rural city, maybe a St. Louis? Cleveland? I honestly have no idea. It's not the biggest deal, but it would have been nice to know where these people lived. Or are they even in the US considering the author is Australian? Did her own book publisher think Americans wouldn't read a book set outside of the US, so they stripped all location-identifying details? I guess I'll never know.
All in all, I started this book with cautious expectations; the fact that everyone called this hilarious while I found nothing funny, made me worried that I would end up abandoning it. Luckily I stayed with it, and did end up enjoying it. I would certainly consider reading Thorne's next book as well.
