The Hating Game

The Hating Game

If the devil wore Hugo Boss . . .

Debut author Sally Thorne bursts on the scene with a hilarious and sexy workplace comedy all about that pencil-thin line between hate and love.

Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She's charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.

Trapped in a shared office together fourty (ok, fifty or sixty) hours a week, they've become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There's the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can't let Joshua beat her at anything-especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking.

If Lucy wins this game, she'll be Joshua's boss. If she loses, she'll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she's got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth-shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she's got Joshua Templeman all wrong.

Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn't hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn't hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game. A friend of Sally's who was always supportive of her writing requested a short story as a present, and gave Sally a prompt with the word -nemesis'. When the friend received a 50,000 word first draft of a novel, she was thrilled and went on to encourage Sally to take the draft to agents and publishers. Having written debut novel without any heavy expectations on the writing process, The Hating Game is fresh and moves deftly and unexpectedly around a familiar storyline.

Sally Thorne lives in Canberra, Australia and spends her days writing funding submissions and drafting contracts (yawn!) so it's not surprising that after hours she climbs into colorful fictional worlds of her own creation. Sally believes that romance readers are always searching for intensity in their next favorite book – and it isn't always so easy to find. The Hating Game is her first novel.

The Hating Game
Hachette Australia
Author: Sally Thorne
RRP: $32.99