Summary
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman are co-assistants to the joint CEOs of a publishing company formed by a merger, sharing a tiny office, facing each other across identical desks, and conducting an elaborate cold war of small competitions and veiled hostilities. Lucy is warm, compulsively accommodating, and has built an entire career out of being liked. Joshua is cold, precise, devastating in meetings, and apparently incapable of normal human expression. They have been playing the hating game for months when the novel opens, and the reader immediately understands — even if Lucy doesn't — what that game is really about.
The Hating Game is the novel that revived the enemies-to-lovers romance as a serious commercial category. Thorne's achievement is making the slow burn feel genuinely earned: Lucy and Joshua's antagonism has the specific texture of two people who have been studying each other obsessively, and the gradual revelation that obsession is mutual is the novel's primary pleasure. The office setting — confined, hierarchical, rule-governed — creates exactly the right kind of pressure cooker.
Thorne writes from Lucy's perspective with comic skill; Lucy's internal monologue is funny, self-aware, and chronically unreliable about Joshua's motives. The novel is almost entirely driven by interiority — what Lucy notices, overthinks, and misreads. Joshua's emotional opacity is maintained with discipline; we only understand him through the cracks, which makes each crack more significant. The physical tension, when it finally arrives, feels like weather breaking.
This is genre romance done at a high level of craft. It has a clear premise, sharp execution, good comedy, and an emotionally satisfying arc. It does not have literary ambiguity or complex moral stakes. Readers who dislike genre conventions — the particular escalation rhythms of romance, the guaranteed resolution — won't be converted here. Readers who like romance novels and haven't read this one are missing something.
Talk to The Hating Game like its author wrote you back.
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Key takeaways
- 1.
Thorne uses the physical confinement of the shared office brilliantly — two people who cannot escape each other without quitting creates a pressure that the novel exploits for both comedy and tension.
- 2.
Lucy's compulsive people-pleasing is presented as both charming and problematic — the novel uses her relationship with Joshua to examine what she costs herself by always accommodating others.
- 3.
Joshua's emotional opacity is the novel's structural bet: Thorne keeps him opaque long enough that the reader and Lucy are genuinely uncertain what he feels, and the revelation lands with force.
- 4.
The enemies-to-lovers arc depends on the reader finding the antagonism credible before finding the attraction credible. Thorne establishes both with enough specificity that neither feels forced.
- 5.
The novel is entirely in Lucy's head, and her unreliable narration — she consistently misreads Joshua's actions — is part of the comedy and the emotional delay mechanism.
- 6.
The workplace setting raises questions about power and consent that the novel navigates carefully: Thorne keeps the professional stakes real and has Lucy register them.
- 7.
The physical intimacy scenes are written with genuine heat and some humor — Thorne does not treat them as merely obligatory genre checkboxes.
- 8.
The ending is warm and complete without being saccharine. Thorne earned the resolution by making the reader wait long enough to want it badly.
Discussion questions
Use these on your own, with a book club, or as chat starters in Superbook.
- 1.
The hating game is really a watching game — Lucy and Joshua have been studying each other for months before the novel opens. What does that mutual surveillance suggest about what the hostility was actually about?
- 2.
Lucy is compulsively accommodating with everyone except Joshua. What does her willingness to fight with him suggest that her niceness elsewhere doesn't?
- 3.
Joshua's emotional distance is presented as protective rather than cruel — he's guarded rather than cold. Does the novel fully justify the behavior that distance produces, particularly in the first half?
- 4.
The shared-office setup is a compression device. How much does the novel depend on confinement? Would it work the same way if they could simply avoid each other?
- 5.
Lucy consistently misreads Joshua's signals. Is that failure of reading realistic, or does the novel stretch credulity to delay the resolution?
- 6.
The novel has almost no supporting characters of substance — colleagues are mostly furniture. Does that absence limit the world of the book, or is it the right call for a story this focused?
- 7.
The professional competition between Lucy and Joshua for a promotion is never fully resolved in a satisfying way. Does that feel like a deliberate choice or an unresolved thread?
- 8.
The Hating Game is widely credited with reviving the enemies-to-lovers subgenre. What does the enormous appetite for that particular arc tell us about readers?
- 9.
Lucy's voice is funny, obsessive, and occasionally exhausting. How much of your enjoyment of the book depended on liking her narration?
- 10.
Joshua is revealed to be more emotionally intelligent than he appears. Was the reveal convincing, or did it feel like the novel backfilling to make him worthy of Lucy?
- 11.
What does the novel suggest about the relationship between competition and desire — is wanting to beat someone and wanting to be with them actually that different?
Themes
Frequently asked questions
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Is The Hating Game spicy?
It's sexually tense throughout and has several explicit scenes, though the novel is not primarily an erotic romance. The heat is earned through a long slow burn — most readers find the build more effective than the payoff, which is high praise for a slow-burn romance.
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Is it a standalone novel?
Yes. The Hating Game is complete in itself. Sally Thorne's subsequent novels (99 Percent Mine, Second First Impressions) feature different characters and are also standalone.
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Is the office romance premise uncomfortable?
The novel registers the professional complications — both characters are aware of the company's power dynamics — without letting them derail the plot. Some readers find the resolution implausible; others find Thorne handles it with enough care.
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Was there a film adaptation?
Yes. A 2021 film adaptation was released, starring Lucy Hale as Lucy and Austin Stowell as Joshua. Reception was mixed — most book fans found it adequately enjoyable but thinner than the novel.
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Who shouldn't read The Hating Game?
Readers who need their fiction to transcend genre conventions. The Hating Game is superbly executed genre romance — it has no ambitions beyond being very good at what it is. If that feels limiting, it will feel limiting here too.
