BOOK REVIEW: THE HATING GAME BY SALLY THORNE

if you want a proper hate-to-love story, just do yourself a favour and read pride and prejudice instead

i knew this book was gonna be a 2 star book 20% in so this rating does not at all come as a surprise to me. (frankly, the only reason it's not a 1 star is because I managed to finish it.) this is gonna be a long review so bear with me here:

The Hating Game is a romance first and foremost. There is very very (very) little time given to anything outside the romance, so for me to have liked this book, the romance would've had to be ROCK SOLID. Given my 2-star rating, it was not. In fact, it was not even vaguely solid in shape. It was more like a blob, or like a nondescript gaseous presence or something (i really need to quit while I'm ahead with these states of matter analogies huh). What I'm trying to say is, it felt insubstantial.

a list of things from the book that annoyed the everloving shit out of me :) 

1) OH MY GOD I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES LUCY MENTIONS HOW HOT JOSH IS. I'm convinced that if all the unnecessary descriptions of Josh's otherworldly Hotness were taken out of this book, it would be like 5 pages total. You know when someone does something really dumb and you wish there were a camera filming you so you could incredulously stare into it like Jim from The Office? That was me every single time Lucy lost her shit over Josh's body. I'm pretty sure you could name each chapter of this book after whatever part of his body Lucy was fixating on at the time. If I had a dollar for every time Lucy "drooled" over how hot he was, I still wouldn't have enough money to compensate me for the pure torture of having to wade through page after page about his biceps and pectorals and calves—and let me tell ya, I WOULD HAVE A SHITLOAD OF MONEY. I'm almost certain that a permanent part of me died after the 2038213328th description of the defined lines of his abs. I know I'm going on and on about this, but let me just give you a very small sample of what I had to go through:

"The rounded caps of muscle on his shoulders balance on smoothly curving biceps. His elbow and wrist joints are like something from a hardware store."

"His biceps and lower abdomen are ridged with those blatantly masculine veins. Those veins ride over muscle and tell you, I've earned this. His hips have ridged that point down toward his groin, obscured in suit pants."

"The deep lines of his collarbones and hips are an impressive frame. In between are a series of individual muscles, each representing a goal set and box ticked. Flat, square pectorals with rounded edges. The skin of his stomach pulls tight across the kind of muscles I usually stare at during Olympic swimming finals."

"The muscles are all stacked together like LEGOs."

like LEGOs? COME ON (and that's just the PG cut of these annoying ass descriptions) 


(I have never related so much to Stanely)

2) The writing style was...ROUGH, to say the least. How do I put this delicately?...It was CRINGEY AS HELL. I can't believe that at one point, I had to read the phrase "Le sigh" with my own two eyes. That was the precise moment I lost all hope in the writing style. I had a line, and "le sigh" crossed it—in fact, "le sigh" looked at my line, personally insulted me, flipped me off, then spat on my line and straight up pole-vaulted across it, never to be seen again. And I wish the monstrosities had stopped at "le sigh." But no, the list of needlessly dumb descriptions in The Hating Game was as long as it was painful. Some standout examples include Lucy describing her lipstick as "slit-wrists red" (i don't even have the time to go into how problematic that is), comparing her room to a "Calcutta slum," and joking with Josh about him trapping her in his basement and making her a "sex slave" (lol aren't sex slave jokes hilarious). Not to mention the casual fatphobia—she literally calls her boss "Fat Little Dick"—that was just the delicious cherry on top of this novel's shitty writing cake.

3) I hated all the characters. Lucy was UNBEARABLE. Literally every single time Josh so much as glanced at her she was like oh my gawd !!! my nerve endings are on fire !!!!!! i want to explode !!!! he is so hawtttttt !!!! and every time he so much as grazed her skin she was like holy shite !!!!! is this what the big bang feels like !!!! my skin is on fire !!!! can yall just chill. please. Also, Josh was a piece of shit. He was entitled, possessive, jealous, and really randomly volatile at times. Needless to say, I did not enjoy their relationship. At all. Literally the first time they kiss, Lucy thinks he's about to hit her so she shields her face with her arms ????? am I the only one who sees some...ISSUES with that??? no? ok. 

Yeah so basically what I didn't like about this book were the characters, the plot, and the romance. no biggie. imma just go ahead and continue my reread of pride and prejudice, seeing that it's better than this book in every single way imaginable. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯