Antonia Bernardin

My 38th read of the year was The Hating game by Sally Thorne, another booktok favourite, which has been turned into a movie too.

A summary attempt

Lucy and Josh are complete opposites, hippy vs corporate, people pleaser vs universally feared, driven by good literature vs driven by sales. They are the executive assistants to two ceo’s from a merger of two publishing houses with very different approaches and they hate each other. They have multiple hr complaints against one another and they spend most of their days scheming on how to wind the other up, or distract, or make them laugh. When the ceo’s announce there will be a new position just below them and the successful candidate will be the boss of the remaining executive assistant, their competitive streak ratchets up a notch.

When the tension inevitably bubbles over and turns into something more, Lucy discovers many surprising things about her nemesis and starts to find out, to her dismay, she could actually quite like him… but what does that mean for the promotion and for them?

What did I think?

This book is so much fun, it genuinely made me laugh out loud quite a lot, their banter and competitiveness makes you do the squee kicking fee thing. It is one of the few ‘enemies to lovers’ set in a modern day setting that felt realistic, whereas usually someones “enemy” in these books is a bit convoluted, they had a genuine rivalry that also didn’t make the Male MC a walking red flag and didn’t rely wholly on the miscommunication trope *coughs* looking at you The Spanish Deception*.

I’m definitely looking into other books by this author as this is the first one of theirs I’ve read.