Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - The Hating Game

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

62 reviews

arthisthoe's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Just so sweet, so funny, with a twinge of heartfelt.

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mel_s_bookshelf's review against another edition

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I found the characters quite irritating and found the 'games' that they played with each other petty and immature. I get the that was perhaps the point of the start of the book and was willing to keep going until I got to the elevator scene.

While some people may find this scene 'saucy' I couldn't get past that it began as sexual assault. Josh emergency stops the elevator and Lucy is clearly uncomfortable. He then picks Lucy up and when she says to put her down he proceeds to push her up against the wall and starts to kiss her. She ends up kissing him back so it is brushed off that this is okay. It is not.

I skim read through the rest of the book only to find it rather boring and also full of more problematic behaviour.

Numerous times Josh tells Danny not to talk to Lucy, or deliberately tries to distance them. Near the end he snatches Lucy's phone from her while she is talking to Danny and tells him to stop talking to her. This is very much controlling behaviour and I am unsure why this book is glorified as being a 'cute romance'. There is nothing cute about Josh's behaviour.

I really don't understand why this book is so hyped up??

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_tamara_'s review against another edition

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funny lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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bendersreads's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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angelsfw's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

“fight with me, kiss me. laugh at me. tell me if you’re sad. don’t make me go home.”

i really enjoyed this romance and had a lot of fun while reading it. i thought the banter between the two characters was so funny and it did make me laugh at times. their relationship had a very natural progression and nothing felt too rushed. the chemistry was completely believable and they both had me enraptured and rooting for them.

however, the reason this is rated 1 star and not 5 is because in the first printing of the book the author used the r-slur. On page 358, josh refers to himself as “emotionally stunted”, which was what was changed in later printings. why is that a word authors still feel the need to use in their books ? its so completely unnecessary and i would have never known if i hadn’t read reviews myself. its great that it was changed, but it shouldn’t have been used in the first place. ableism isn’t cute or quirky so stop using the r-slur. in addition to this, there was also unnecessary amounts of fatphobia. fat and ugly were essentially used interchangeably throughout the book. this outdated idea is simply not true ?!?!?!?! fat does not equal ugly and i can’t even believe the author included that ?

also, the whole “lucy being way shorter than josh” was ridiculous at times. she referred to herself as small and squishy too many times throughout the book. there are much better ways to emphasize a height difference. she also made it a point to compare her body to josh’s and how she was so “squishy” in comparison to his muscle toned figure. i just felt it was so unnecessary.

despite that, this has definitely become a comfort read for me. i feel like there’s a lot the author can learn from in this book and i encourage her to do just that.

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jessicaludden's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The beginning of this book almost made me want to not finish it. It did get a lot better after the first half of the book though. My main problem with it was that it didn’t feel like they hated each other enough. It felt like they rushed through the hating each other part and then started liking each other really quickly. They had a really weird relationship dynamic while they transitioning between hating each other and liking each other. The banter was either really weird or really cute. It was really hit or miss. Like sometimes I would be reading it smiling thinking aw this is cute and then one of them would say something and I’d be like wtf who says that? I didn’t really like Lucy that much because a lot of the things she did just didn’t make sense to me. I just couldn’t imagine an actual person saying or doing the things she was doing. I also remember seeing something before I read this about how they mention how small she is all the time and I didn’t believe it until I read this and realized they bring it up so much and it’s so unnecessary. What I did like about it is the conversations they had about their feelings towards the end of the book. Not just their feelings for each other, but also their feelings about their childhood and their family. I feel like once they got past the whole idea of hating each other, they had really good communication and really understood each other. It was nice to see them getting to know each other and falling in love in real time. I just don’t think this is an enemies to lovers book.

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