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.

The relationship and its various shenanigans depicted in this book are not healthy, not cute and certainly not funny. Plot reveals later make sense of this tactic, but I think it’s a good idea to be aware going in that readers are going to get a whole lot of Lucy, and the truth comes later. If your reading catnip includes dialogue that crackles, cranky heroes with hidden depths, and vivid, self-assured heroines who take exactly zero crap from said hero, find yourself a copy of this book immediately. Josh is tired of women only wanting him for his body then dumping him because of his shitty personality, like maybe spend half as much time improving your personality as you do at the gym? The result is a wicked, witty romance that will capture readers' hearts long before Joshua manages to capture Lucy's.DNF’d at 44% – I wouldn’t usually post a review when I am feeling this het up but ranting on Goodreads (something I also don’t often do), just wasn’t enough to put my feelings aside. First, she thinks the investigators will "assume" she is a stripper because of things she's wearing. The next day, Lucy overhears and misinterprets a conversation between Josh and their boss, concluding that Josh has been using their romance to distract her from the promotion. Time was shown to pass without unnecessary fillers and enough drop-ins to scenes here and there that truly added to the story and the development of feelings. Lucy is a tiny, adorable, Smurf collecting people pleaser whereas Josh comes across as an aloof, rod stuck up him bum, fear monger.

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. It’s fine that she is denying her feelings for him and his for her, but throughout the book, she just seems increasingly more dense and willfully delusional about it.Although the author made it very clear that Josh is supposed to be some sort of demi-god, that still doesn’t justify Lucy’s obsession with him. Plus she says it in a way that also disrespects sex workers, like it's bad they will assume she is a hooker? It’s only fitting I picked up the Movie Tie In version – which I normally hate – but I decided to wait the 11 weeks for the book at my library. Lucy and Joshua are executive assistants to co-CEOs in their workplace and for over a year have had an animosity game going on. There’s so much more to Josh than we see, than ever Lucy sees, and that’s part of the joy in The Hating Game.