Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - The Hating Game

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

26 reviews

micaela_ru's review against another edition

medium-paced

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

Toxic, sexist trash that casually includes ableist and racist slurs, jokes about the deaths of sex workers, fatphobia, toxic masculinity, rape culture and nonconsensual acts played as sexy. DNF @ 20%. The MC is an entitled childish brat who has internalized sexism and possibly homophobia and transphobia. The love interest is embodies textbook toxic masculinity. Clearly I'm not the target audience here. I don't think feeling physically threatened by a man three-times a woman's size is playful or sexy. Not to mention the stalking. They also have no chemistry and the book is boring and childish. This is the crap that is popular?

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victorianbsilva's review against another edition

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funny tense fast-paced

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

2.5

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capybooks's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

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

4.5

As far as the enemies-to-lovers trope goes, The Hating Game takes the cake. There are so many things I love about this novel - the elevator scene in chapter 6, Josh looking after Lucy when she was ill, the flowers Josh sends Lucy (THE NOTE 😭🥺), Lucy standing up for Josh against his father. All brilliant scenes! One slight issue I had was I feel like ‘hate’ is too strong a word for this story. The characters say they hate each other, but do little to actually show that, although I do understand the whole idea is them saying they hate each other as opposed to admitting the feelings they both have. The Hating Game is a lighthearted, hilarious and feel-good novel, and I can’t wait to read it again soon.

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sarahsreadinglist's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.0

I went into this book with high expectations, as it was recommended all over BookTok as a cute enemies-to-lovers workplace romance. I do not think it lived up to the hype. One thing I disliked that sticks out in memory is the way the author repeatedly mentioned the male main character’s height in relation to the female main character’s shortness; it felt unnecessary and weirdly infantilizing to the female character.

I ultimately enjoyed the book, especially the drama and romantic tension between the characters, but I found it generally pretty mediocre.

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uyeb's review against another edition

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funny fast-paced

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

2.0

1.5/5 stars

you don’t understand the ANGER i feel at this book for so utterly disappointing me. let me go on a rant for a second.

first of all, i actually started this book liking it pretty well. then it went on and the writing style had me a bit confused, but i was still pretty into the story. then about 250 pages through i realized ‘this is bs’ and started looking at the whole book through a lens of ‘how did booktok so passionately promote something so problematic?’. yea sjm is on the list a lot and yes some of the popular books aren’t good but so far, tiktok has done a pretty good job for me. apparently it ends here?

for starters, i was pretty quickly annoyed with both the main character and the love interest. lucy is very adamant about making people know she’s short (fine for a bit but gets annoying after a while), and OBSESSIVELY talks about josh’s body and kissing him, etc. that came across like… super freaking gross to me? then josh’s whole point of existence was being tall and muscular but also mean and the ‘iceman’ that needed to be proven to be nice. first of all, overdone trope. second of all, ew. their romance was bearable for most of the book, but the make out scenes were confusing and the amount of time they spent talking about sex instead of… idk… hanging out? was frustrATING. plus the weird plot point of painting his room the color of her eyes???? no thank you. i also didn’t love the pacing but that’s a me thing not a book problem.

then there was the insanely talked about idea of masculinity? i caught somewhere between 5 and 10 really really weird things that were said, along the lines of ‘saved from femininity’, ‘his manliness’, etc. and it came across as toxic masculinity and misogyny wrapped up into one weird package. no idea if that was the intention or not, but that’s what happened. also should mention the ‘his desk was the male version of mine, with blue post it notes, while i have pink’. yep you heard it here first, blue = men and pink = women. also, not an uncommon thing in romance but i still hate it, groups of women were referred to as ‘females’ at least once in this book. and that’s not inherently problematic but it’s weird. a. vaguely derogatory and b. a little transphobic and/or trans-exclusionary.

then let’s not forget to mention the fat-phobia and strange mentions of eating/food (not even sure how to categorize them), the use of multiple literal slurs??? how have more people not talked about that. there’s also the casual mentions about wanting to die (not in reference to anything like mental health, just about kissing, sex, etc) that multiple people have pointed out are very inappropriate, ableist language that’s used very frequently, and the occasional sprinkle of implying that being a sex worker is inherently a bad thing. yeah the phrases used to describe disabled people (some of which are considered slurs to begin with) used derogatorily are too much. some other reviewers have said it more eloquently than i can but it’s not good. there’s also a blatant lack of consent- especially lacking on lucy’s part- that made me personally super uncomfy. edit: let’s also not forget the fact that josh is lowkey toxic- he was unnecessarily possessive and weird to danny when it was completely undeserved. not possessive in the way some books do it well, trust me.

all this said, the romance was fine for the most part, but the writing style and language used really ruined it for me. i’m starting to think the adult romance genre isn’t gonna do it for me (dw tho, i’m not giving up). i at least definitely should’ve listened to myself when i originally thought i wouldn’t like this. would not recommend, this is the lowest i think i’ve ever rated something even if it’s not the worst book i’ve ever read in terms of actual content. :(

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jmonca's review against another edition

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lighthearted fast-paced

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

2.0

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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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