But, like I'm sure a lot of people can relate with, her desire to be liked by others often meant she was taken advantage of.

But when an elevator ride leads to a steamy, hot as hell kiss Lucy starts to wonder if she's got it all wrong. Apart from actively seeking them out on Goodreads I hadn’t seen anyone else feel negatively towards this book and was beginning to worry I’d hallucinated it all. The pacing was really really weird, I was so surprised to find that I was left than halfway through when I left off.

She gets to his apartment and sees him, then she runs up to him and smells him, describing his sweat as “[rainwater and cedar], leaving a faint rosemary-pine tingle in my nostrils.

Except it’s SO obvious to anyone but Lucy that he is super into her and in fact does not hate her at all. Anyway, THG made me angry and I do not foresee that shading over into love any time soon because I’m a grown-up with healthy self-esteem.By page 50, I was utterly exhausted from reading how short Lucy was in comparison to how tall and masculine Joshua was. Whilst that did throw me off, I understand that a lot of books have a big ‘down’ after everything seems to come together, therefore creating a more significant conclusion. I have a weird self-deprecating sense of humor that not many people in my real life seem to get, but the hate/love balance in this book produced some nice sarcasm right on my level. The Hating Game is lovely, fun, and hot romance about two nemesis, Lucy and Joshua, falling for each other. With each new encounter between the pair his tough exterior is slowly chipped away and what's left is a shy and delicate romantic - it is enough to make any lady swoon!

The book really captures all the obssesive-annoying-jealousy feelings you feel when you’re in a new relationship, but at the same time keeps so much of the cute and endearing banter alive right through the book. Everything is a competition between them, leading to The Staring Game, The HR Game and, of course, The Hating Game. I can't go back to my copy for quotes for this review because I end up reading it again and I already lost too much time and sleep trying to make myself stop reading it.

If you follow me on Twitter or have read other reviews by me, you might know that I am not a fan of the short and petite heroine thing. The smut scenes were plentiful, but were all written well and weren’t cringey or cliche in any way, which is a hell lot better than what I can say for many other books. Then again, if she were a little more observant then we wouldn’t have this funny and swoon-worthy story in the first place.

She is desperate to be liked and as much as she outwardly carries her “people-pleasing” persona inwardly (and to Joshua) she is snarky and a tad mean. Yet when Josh would try and be nice to her, ugh, my heart hurt because I was begging for her not to freak out. I'm just glad I have this in both audio and Kindle format so that I can read/listen again and again whenever I want because THIS WAS TOO GOOD. It was obvious very early in book that he fell for Lucy as soon as he saw her and didn’t know what to do with his feelings nor had the courage to voice it. I doubt any romance will ever be a 5-star read for me, because the inevitable predictability with the genre spoils total enjoyment.so it’s not surprising that after hours she climbs into colorful fictional worlds of her own creation. Whilst I would love to read a sequel, I would hate – pardon the pun – for the book to go in a different direction than it has done. Lucy narrates how nice it is to feel smothered by a guy who’s a foot and a half taller than her and built swole, and all I felt was suffocated — like, cool if that’s your kink but it was presented as what every red-blooded girl wants. It might seem like I didn’t love these characters, and I wouldn’t say that I lovedddd them, but what redeemed them for me were their genuine quirks.