**My Mixed Feelings about "The Hating Game"**

I don't love that like man can't handle his feelings so she's main like I just don't I just don't get it and he also has a big problem with nice guys well that's kind of a thing that I'm like okay with because I do find like just very nice pure characters to be very boring it's just something that I don't love so that was something that I kind of was like okay yeah like you need something a little more interesting like the typical nice guy whatever because that's just the vibe that I get with like pure nice characters I just find them too predictable because the pure nice character is always gonna do the pure nice thing so I'm just like I don't really love that with like any kind of book whether it's romance or not but the same time I'm like why are you attacking nice people all the time I'm like why do you have such a problem with niceness I don't I don't get it.

**Romance Scenes: A Mixed Bag**

The problem was that I felt like a lot of them happened too quickly and I didn't like how we got there and the sequence in which a lot of them happened. I also feel like a lot of them could be have like been split up into different parts of the story and it would have made more sense to me because some things happened earlier that I'm like that shouldn't have happened until later when you had a like deeper bond like I just I so like individual scenes I really liked and I liked a lot of the vibe of that but at the same time I was like I feel like the sequencing of these and the timing of them is a little off in a way that I can't quite get into it and enjoy it because I don't like how we got here.

**Character Dynamics: A Complex Relationship**

I also felt that the characters got a little too close too fast and they were doing a lot of things when their relationship hadn't quite been worked out. It was like why are you so affectionate I liked the affection and the scenes but you're so affectionate especially her she was very clingy affectionate which is just not a vibe that I like just not I I don't I don't love it. There were moments where they gave as good as they got, and that's an element of hate to love that I really enjoy. But overall, their dynamic felt a bit off to me.

**Overall Impression: A Mixed Bag**

I did like some elements of the book, but my dislike for certain aspects overshadowed my enjoyment. The authors' attempt to add complexity to their romance scenes and character dynamics didn't quite work for me. I found myself wishing that certain events would have been spaced out or sequenced differently. Overall, I gave this three stars - originally, I said 3.5 because romances are generally enjoyable, but my issues with the book outweighed its redeeming qualities.

**Movie Adaptation: A Possible Bright Spot**

However, I do think that "The Hating Game" has potential as a movie. They're optioning it for film adaptation, and if done well, I could see myself enjoying it on screen. The characters' interactions and chemistry might translate better to the big screen, and I'd be excited to see how they would bring this story to life in a different medium.

**A Reading Flog with Spoilers**

For those interested in hearing more about my thoughts on "The Hating Game," I recorded a reading flog that contains spoilers. In it, I delve deeper into the issues I had with certain aspects of the book and share some of my favorite scenes. If you want to check out the flog, feel free to link to it below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's Sam and this is my spoiler free review for the Hayden game by Stanley Thorne this is an adult contemporary romance if I was her main character of Lucy and she works at a publishing firm and she is the assistant to one of the CEOs there are two CEOs because the firm kind of like merged with another firm and so now she shares a working space for the last year or so with the other CEOs assistant Josh and her and Josh hate each other their work days basically consists of how they can annoy each other more and who can kind of win the battle so they both end up in the running for the same promotion and everything kind of goes from there so as this is a romance book I will be talking about different tropes and things that some people might consider spoilers romance books are a little bit different than other stories and that people go into romance books looking for particular tropes and things that they might like so I'll be talking about some of those tropes here if you don't want to hear anything about that then you probably should be watching reviews for romance books in general because they're just reviewed a little differently because of the nature of the genre this is a very very popular hate to love type story I will say I don't really consider this quite hate to love because of the timeline of how things occur in this story I feel like the moment of attraction happens way quicker and the like actual physical contact and things happens way quicker than a typical hate to love in my opinion so there's that element going on and because of that that made me not like as much about the rest of the story because I didn't like how this relationship sort of started because I felt like it was a lot of things sort of happened out of sequence in my opinion there's a lot of like you know romance tropes that do happen throughout but I feel like the moment in which the will they won't they start it as far as like first kiss and things like that happened way sooner and the story that I was expecting and so it didn't really feel like a hate to love in that way because I was like you've already initiated contact so it's not really hate to love because at that point it's like you don't quite hate each other there's also things about this authors writing style that I don't love she makes a lot of comparisons about physical appearance that I just think are wrong and are not corrected in the story from the beginning the character is always saying how Josh because he's a bad person should be like a hunchback or have acne or be really ugly this says a lot about just disability and such that someone with the hunchback should be like a bad person or that they like did something to have this disability same thing with like acne or things like that that like you're one that those things are like ugly and also that ugliness is caused by how you are as a person like that is a deep-seated societal belief that is wrong that it's not that you physically manifest how you are that that's like a punishment for bad behavior and that's something that's like very deeply rooted in a lot of like puritanical societal cultural things so don't love that don't love that at all but also a lot of different things like stars for writing at one point she says putting on lipstick and she says it's a lipstick of like slit wrists you know so trigger for self-harm they're like really inappropriate you can say you can even say blood red you don't need to say slit wrists it's just it's just not appropriate so I felt like at times the writing style was almost like immature cuz I'm like do you not have the wherewithal also how this could pass an editor did you not have to wherewithal to know like these are not appropriate statements to be making there is the trope of like very big man very small woman that's also throughout the story so josh is always talking about being like this really super fit guy who's really in strict control of his diet like barely eats which also I'm like that's accurate for people that have very buff bodies also it's really unhealthy and toxic to be that into fitness just letting you know because I used to be there so it's that I'm just like yeah so that's not great but he I get it I'm also attracted to very tall like big people so this tall buff guy I get it he's super hot whatever but then you also have her tiny nasai like at one point there's a whole line about like her very small like petite tiny knees okay and just like how small she is and how like she can be picked up but and she's wearing heels like this is exactly how tall she is and it just like smallness is really talked about a lot which I also like I get this as a romance trope that some people do like but I'm like the smallness associated with femininity and the largeness associated with masculinity is also a binary that I just don't love she talks about having an ex-boyfriend who was like five six and he was they referred to was like a little boy and he was no way you know he could never pick her up and I'm like strength has nothing to do with how tall you are like there are plenty of like short people who are very strongly I don't understand so a lot of that stuff is just like I don't love this dichotomy that you've set up I kind of got a sense from the beginning that this hate to love trope would always be like he was mean to you because he secretly liked you and didn't like that he liked you and I don't love that vibe and that's if I be good from the beginning so whether that's true or not I'm not saying but like if that's the vibe that you start to get from the beginning and I just don't love that like man can't handle his feelings so she's main like I just don't I just don't get it and he also has a big problem with nice guys well that's kind of a thing that I'm like okay with because I do find like just very nice pure characters to be very boring it's just something that I don't love so that was something that I kind of was like okay yeah like you need something a little more interesting like the typical nice guy whatever because that's just the vibe that I get with like pure nice characters I just find them too predictable because the pure nice character is always gonna do the pure nice thing so I'm just like I don't really love that with like any kind of book whether it's romance or not but the same time I'm like why are you attacking nice people all the time I'm like why do you have such a problem with niceness I don't I don't get it I will say because I've just been I feel like complaining about a lot of elements of this book I did like a lot of the romance stuff in the romance scenes like I said earlier the problem was that I felt like a lot of them happened too quickly and I didn't like how we got there and the sequence in which a lot of them happened I also feel like a lot of them could be have like been split up into different parts of the story and it would have made more sense to me because some things happened earlier that I'm like that shouldn't have happened until later when you had a like deeper bond like I just I so like individual scenes I really liked and I liked a lot of the vibe of that but at the same time I was like I feel like the sequencing of these and the timing of them is a little off in a way that I can't quite get into it and enjoy it because I don't like how we got here I also felt that the characters got a little too close too fast and they were doing a lot of things when their relationship hadn't quite been worked out it was like why are you so affectionate I liked the affection and the scenes but you're so affectionate and especially her she was very clingy affectionate which is just not a vibe that I like just not I I don't I don't love it I just don't love it especially for I hate to love type thing so those were things that just like kind of bother me I do like a lot of elements of their dynamic as just kind of like giving as good as they get that's an element of hate to love that I really enjoy I also like how they sort of stick up for one another there's an element of her sting up for him at certain points that I do like so again there's some things about their dynamic I really liked but I felt like first as hyped up a book eyes as it is and that's why I'm kind of talking about some of these things I didn't enjoy I was expecting to love it a lot more and there were a lot of things about the story and the beats and like some of the tropes that again I liked some of the tropes that existed but I wanted them to exist in a different order or to be done a little bit differently so I just didn't feel like this was the hate to love that I was quite wanting or expecting or needing I just didn't like it as much as I liked the unnie mooners for example so overall I gave this three probably three stars I originally said 3.5 because I do just like romances are just generally like fairly enjoyable but at the same time I just had a lot of problems with this and I didn't like immediately love these characters I think I'm really going to enjoy the movie because they are optioning or they have option this is a movie they're gonna make it into movie and they gonna make a really good rom-com I could see a lot of it in my head but I just had a lot of problems with some of the things some of the tropes in the ways they were used that I just didn't love this universally as much I felt like less the characters were like flat at some points and just like they just didn't feel like they had a lot of continuity because again I feel like the placement of events and things just not quite where I hoped it would be so I did do a reading flog of this book that does have spoilers in it so I talked a little bit more in depth about some of the things that I might have liked or didn't like with spoilers in there so if you want to check that out I will link that on the screen so comment below let me know what you thought of the hating game so thank you all for watching and I'll see all the guys soon by youhey guys it's Sam and this is my spoiler free review for the Hayden game by Stanley Thorne this is an adult contemporary romance if I was her main character of Lucy and she works at a publishing firm and she is the assistant to one of the CEOs there are two CEOs because the firm kind of like merged with another firm and so now she shares a working space for the last year or so with the other CEOs assistant Josh and her and Josh hate each other their work days basically consists of how they can annoy each other more and who can kind of win the battle so they both end up in the running for the same promotion and everything kind of goes from there so as this is a romance book I will be talking about different tropes and things that some people might consider spoilers romance books are a little bit different than other stories and that people go into romance books looking for particular tropes and things that they might like so I'll be talking about some of those tropes here if you don't want to hear anything about that then you probably should be watching reviews for romance books in general because they're just reviewed a little differently because of the nature of the genre this is a very very popular hate to love type story I will say I don't really consider this quite hate to love because of the timeline of how things occur in this story I feel like the moment of attraction happens way quicker and the like actual physical contact and things happens way quicker than a typical hate to love in my opinion so there's that element going on and because of that that made me not like as much about the rest of the story because I didn't like how this relationship sort of started because I felt like it was a lot of things sort of happened out of sequence in my opinion there's a lot of like you know romance tropes that do happen throughout but I feel like the moment in which the will they won't they start it as far as like first kiss and things like that happened way sooner and the story that I was expecting and so it didn't really feel like a hate to love in that way because I was like you've already initiated contact so it's not really hate to love because at that point it's like you don't quite hate each other there's also things about this authors writing style that I don't love she makes a lot of comparisons about physical appearance that I just think are wrong and are not corrected in the story from the beginning the character is always saying how Josh because he's a bad person should be like a hunchback or have acne or be really ugly this says a lot about just disability and such that someone with the hunchback should be like a bad person or that they like did something to have this disability same thing with like acne or things like that that like you're one that those things are like ugly and also that ugliness is caused by how you are as a person like that is a deep-seated societal belief that is wrong that it's not that you physically manifest how you are that that's like a punishment for bad behavior and that's something that's like very deeply rooted in a lot of like puritanical societal cultural things so don't love that don't love that at all but also a lot of different things like stars for writing at one point she says putting on lipstick and she says it's a lipstick of like slit wrists you know so trigger for self-harm they're like really inappropriate you can say you can even say blood red you don't need to say slit wrists it's just it's just not appropriate so I felt like at times the writing style was almost like immature cuz I'm like do you not have the wherewithal also how this could pass an editor did you not have to wherewithal to know like these are not appropriate statements to be making there is the trope of like very big man very small woman that's also throughout the story so josh is always talking about being like this really super fit guy who's really in strict control of his diet like barely eats which also I'm like that's accurate for people that have very buff bodies also it's really unhealthy and toxic to be that into fitness just letting you know because I used to be there so it's that I'm just like yeah so that's not great but he I get it I'm also attracted to very tall like big people so this tall buff guy I get it he's super hot whatever but then you also have her tiny nasai like at one point there's a whole line about like her very small like petite tiny knees okay and just like how small she is and how like she can be picked up but and she's wearing heels like this is exactly how tall she is and it just like smallness is really talked about a lot which I also like I get this as a romance trope that some people do like but I'm like the smallness associated with femininity and the largeness associated with masculinity is also a binary that I just don't love she talks about having an ex-boyfriend who was like five six and he was they referred to was like a little boy and he was no way you know he could never pick her up and I'm like strength has nothing to do with how tall you are like there are plenty of like short people who are very strongly I don't understand so a lot of that stuff is just like I don't love this dichotomy that you've set up I kind of got a sense from the beginning that this hate to love trope would always be like he was mean to you because he secretly liked you and didn't like that he liked you and I don't love that vibe and that's if I be good from the beginning so whether that's true or not I'm not saying but like if that's the vibe that you start to get from the beginning and I just don't love that like man can't handle his feelings so she's main like I just don't I just don't get it and he also has a big problem with nice guys well that's kind of a thing that I'm like okay with because I do find like just very nice pure characters to be very boring it's just something that I don't love so that was something that I kind of was like okay yeah like you need something a little more interesting like the typical nice guy whatever because that's just the vibe that I get with like pure nice characters I just find them too predictable because the pure nice character is always gonna do the pure nice thing so I'm just like I don't really love that with like any kind of book whether it's romance or not but the same time I'm like why are you attacking nice people all the time I'm like why do you have such a problem with niceness I don't I don't get it I will say because I've just been I feel like complaining about a lot of elements of this book I did like a lot of the romance stuff in the romance scenes like I said earlier the problem was that I felt like a lot of them happened too quickly and I didn't like how we got there and the sequence in which a lot of them happened I also feel like a lot of them could be have like been split up into different parts of the story and it would have made more sense to me because some things happened earlier that I'm like that shouldn't have happened until later when you had a like deeper bond like I just I so like individual scenes I really liked and I liked a lot of the vibe of that but at the same time I was like I feel like the sequencing of these and the timing of them is a little off in a way that I can't quite get into it and enjoy it because I don't like how we got here I also felt that the characters got a little too close too fast and they were doing a lot of things when their relationship hadn't quite been worked out it was like why are you so affectionate I liked the affection and the scenes but you're so affectionate and especially her she was very clingy affectionate which is just not a vibe that I like just not I I don't I don't love it I just don't love it especially for I hate to love type thing so those were things that just like kind of bother me I do like a lot of elements of their dynamic as just kind of like giving as good as they get that's an element of hate to love that I really enjoy I also like how they sort of stick up for one another there's an element of her sting up for him at certain points that I do like so again there's some things about their dynamic I really liked but I felt like first as hyped up a book eyes as it is and that's why I'm kind of talking about some of these things I didn't enjoy I was expecting to love it a lot more and there were a lot of things about the story and the beats and like some of the tropes that again I liked some of the tropes that existed but I wanted them to exist in a different order or to be done a little bit differently so I just didn't feel like this was the hate to love that I was quite wanting or expecting or needing I just didn't like it as much as I liked the unnie mooners for example so overall I gave this three probably three stars I originally said 3.5 because I do just like romances are just generally like fairly enjoyable but at the same time I just had a lot of problems with this and I didn't like immediately love these characters I think I'm really going to enjoy the movie because they are optioning or they have option this is a movie they're gonna make it into movie and they gonna make a really good rom-com I could see a lot of it in my head but I just had a lot of problems with some of the things some of the tropes in the ways they were used that I just didn't love this universally as much I felt like less the characters were like flat at some points and just like they just didn't feel like they had a lot of continuity because again I feel like the placement of events and things just not quite where I hoped it would be so I did do a reading flog of this book that does have spoilers in it so I talked a little bit more in depth about some of the things that I might have liked or didn't like with spoilers in there so if you want to check that out I will link that on the screen so comment below let me know what you thought of the hating game so thank you all for watching and I'll see all the guys soon by you\n"