The Hating Game

NEMESIS (n.)

1. an opponent of 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 prides herself on being loved by everyone at work – except for imposing, impeccably attired Joshua Templeman.

Trapped in a shared office, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive 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 promotion is on offer.

If Lucy wins, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she questioning herself? Maybe she doesn’t hate him. And just maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. 

I read The Hating Game, by Sally Thorne in one sitting the day after my 24^th birthday. I haven’t done that since I finished university. It felt good.

Fellow new adults: I know that every day feels like it has to be some desperate, scrambling attempt to avoid ultimate failure, but what I realised, lying in bed at 1pm reading the final pages of The Hating Game, is that sometimes you have to relax a while on that cliff edge. Whether you do that with a ridiculously sexy book is up to you, but I thoroughly recommend it.

The Hating Game is romantic comedy at its best. Set in the world of publishing – which Nora Ephron taught us is the perfect backdrop for epic romance – we are introduced to Lucy, co-executive assistant to co-CEO Helene Pascal of Bexley & Gamin. There are basically two essential aspects of Lucy.

1. She’s wanted to work in publishing her whole life and,
2. She is obsessed with her co-executive assistant, Joshua.

Only a few months before, everything was going according to plan. Gamin publishing house was Lucy’s dream job – granted she wasn’t working in editorial, like she wanted, but everything was going well enough that it wouldn’t be difficult to progress sideways into editorial when the time was right.

But, with the rapid decline of the publishing industry, that time seemed to be getting farther and farther away. It all but disappeared when, in a last ditch attempt to stay open, Gamin joined with Bexley, a competing (and equally financially sunk) publisher. With Bexley came Joshua, and the hating game began.

Spoiler alert: the hating game takes a turn for the sexy.

‘Love and hate are visceral. Your stomach twists at the thought of that person. The heart in your chest beats heavy and bright, nearly visible through your flesh and clothes. Your appetite and sleep are shredded. Every interaction spikes your blood with a dangerous kind of adrenaline, and you’re on the brink of fight or flight. Your body is barely under your control. You’re consumed, and it scares you.’

To be totally honest, for the first three or so chapters of The Hating Game, I thought Lucy was nuts. When I say she is obsessed with Josh, I am not kidding. The girl lives and breathes this man. Sally Thorne manipulates the situation so that you totally believe Lucy’s only two options for dealing with Joshua are to kill him or sleep with him. Fortunately for the reader, Thorne went with the fun option.

Hate turned love (probably more accurately described as love mistaken for hate) is one of my favourite romantic tropes, and Thorne executes it perfectly. Watching Lucy and Josh circle each other keeps you turning the pages hours after you should have gotten out of bed (in my case, anyway). Josh is every inch the moody, sexy, intense but secretly caring guy that you want him to be. He challenges Lucy in all the areas that she needs it, and helps her to grow into a more assertive person. In turn, she teaches him to be less of an asshole.

All I can say is pick a difficult day, clear your schedule and read the book.

Book Boyfriends for Valentine’s Day

Because boys in books are just better.

Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot

Lady Victoria Arbuthnot is not amused. She’s been shipped from India to England to live with her less-than-ideal relatives, the Gardiners and their zoo of children. If that weren’t bad enough, she’s also being forced to keep her engagement to the charming Lord Malfrey a secret.

It’s all very tedious. As if the family circumstances weren’t enough, Victoria can’t seem to shake the infuriating Captain Carstairs, whose primary hobbies consist of vexing Victoria and spreading rumours about her new fiancé.

For Lady Victoria Arbuthnot, it’s a long road to happily-ever-after.

Captain Carstairs: The, he’s-mean-to-you-because-he-likes-you type. As much as I loved this book it sent me barking up a lot of the wrong trees throughout high school. Totally worth it.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Since Cath started university and her identical twin, Wren ditched her, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. After spending her teens immersed in the world of her Simon Snow fanfiction, Cath honestly doesn’t know how to operate in the real world.

One thing she absolutely does not feel ready for is falling in love. With anything. So the sudden appearance of new friends, new passions and potentially a new boy in her life have her beyond freaked out.

Will Cath figure out how to open her heart before it’s too late?

Levi: Your best friend who you can’t help but fall in love with.

First and Then by Emma Mills

Devon has been crushing on her best friend Cas since forever. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Devon doesn’t even mind any more. She’s pretty much given up on it ever happening.

The butterflies in her stomach haven’t, however.

The drama begins when Devon’s weird cousin Foster comes to live with her family. Foster immediately bonds with Ezra, captain of the football team and prized jackass.

A prized jackass who also happens to be super-hot.

Devon’s life is about to get complicated…

Ezra: The broody one with the tragic history.

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

From the outside it seems like Annabel has everything.

On the inside, she’s crumbling. The girl she thought was her best friend is trying to destroy her. Her family is coming apart at the seams. Her sister is trying to starve herself to death. All Annabel wants is to disappear.

Then she meets Owen. Owen is obsessed with weird music and his radio show, Anger Management. He doesn’t take any bullshit.

He sees the cracks in Annabel’s façade. And he doesn’t leave

Owen: The guy who’s working through some stuff. The one who’s life you can’t help but fall into.

Emmy and Oliver by Robin Benway

Emmy and Oliver planned to be best friends forever. Then Oliver’s parents split up and his father kidnapped him.

Ten years later, he’s back and Emmy has no idea what to do. He’s her best friend and a stranger and the defining disaster of her life to date. Oliver barely remembers her… until he does.

As they grow closer, Emmy has to ask herself, is it possible for them to get back to the people they were supposed to be?

Oliver: The cute guy who got kidnapped by his dad. You know the one. The guy who disappeared for ten years then made you feel like he was never gone.

 

 

 

Isla and the Happily Ever After

I think that sometimes you’re just not compatible with a book. I think that, sometimes, even if the writing is good and by someone you have previously liked, it is possible to read something and feel utterly grossed out. I have this experience whenever someone who seems nice reveals they actually voted Conservative.

Reading Isla and the Happily Ever After was kind of like finding out about a friendly acquaintance’s right-wing proclivities. I try to rationalise that this shouldn’t affect our relationship, but it kind of does anyway.

Isla and the Happily Ever After spans the beginnings of Isla’s relationship with Josh, a boy she has had a crush on for three years. It takes place in the familiar grounds of Stephanie Perkins’ Paris School for Loaded Americans. Shortly after the beginning of their relationship, Isla and Josh have to figure out how to proceed after being forcibly separated by circumstance.

I didn’t dislike everything about this book. Initially I liked Isla. I liked that she was shy and insecure, but had this quiet confidence in herself, her friendships. Her sex life. She seemed acutely aware of the difference between the way she was viewed by her peers and the way that she saw herself. Who hasn’t experienced that? Particularly when you’re young, people have a habit of telling you what you are, which for some of us doesn’t quite fit. It’s uncomfortable. Isla got that, and I appreciated it.

I also tried to appreciate Kurt. It’s really rare to see characters in YA (in general!) with disabilities. I know this because my brother has high functioning autism and a while ago in a bookshop he asked the guy at the counter if he sold any books about people like him. Spoiler alert: he did not (although to be fair, I do accept that most people don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of autistic characters in literature. At least not one that extends beyond The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time). So when I picked up on what she was doing with Kurt with the hand flapping and the blunt reasoning, I was initially kind of impressed.

Initially.

Because not long after Josh’s entrance into the book, Kurt started to feel like kind of a placeholder. There were long sections of the book where he dropped out of the narrative altogether. I don’t necessarily feel that using minorities as incidentals in stories is helpful. It isn’t telling a new story so much as reinforcing a boring, outdated old one: you are easy to ignore.

Yeah. Kurt’s storyline pretty much sucked for me.

His absence for the majority of the book mostly had to do with Isla’s stunning self-absorption. Throughout, Isla never showed interest in anything outside of her own drama. There’s this one scene where she’s home for thanksgiving and seeing her older sister, Gen for the first time since the summer, and Isla doesn’t even ask how she’s been. When Gen shares that she has just broken up with her girlfriend, Isla barely even acknowledges her. While she’s off with Josh, Kurt makes other friends and Isla says herself that she hadn’t even noticed the additions to his life. She says this with no acknowledgement of the fact that this is entirely down to her own totally self involved behaviour.

Isla complains several times as well throughout that she doesn’t have any friends, to which I could only think no wonder. Making friends requires showing interest in other people, something Isla fails at. Epically.

I kept finding myself wanting more from Isla. I wanted her to want something in life other than Josh. I wanted a sense of her desire to go to Dartmouth (a college near where Josh was planning on going, and not her original plan) even when Josh wasn’t in the picture, but I never did. Does anyone else remember when Jessica Darling first went to Columbia? I guess I wanted to see some of that enthusiasm for the future in Isla. Enthusiasm that wasn’t just about Josh. I’m all about a bit of independence, and I didn’t like the way that, by the end, Isla’s identity and future was entirely wrapped around Josh. At eighteen years old it doesn’t seem healthy.

Speaking of too young – Anna and St Clair getting engaged. I’m not even going to touch that because the whole thing was too gross.

I know that a lot of people loved this book. But I could not connect with Isla at all. It occurred to me that perhaps I’m just a little too old? I have found, and I know a lot of my friends share this experience, that the older I get the less tolerance I have for people who thrive off of their own drama.

I wanted a conclusion where Isla addressed her own shitty behaviour, but that never happened. Reading the book was frustrating experience for me.