Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I’m at 20% and what I believe might be wrong with this story is that I have no idea what the story is. The Hating Game came on strong with that first sentence about love and hate and then the beautiful imagery and all that charm. It was love at first sight with that book and I loved, loved, loved it. But this book. Yikes. Two chapters in and I had no idea what the point of the story was. It’s two chapters of the heroine’s internal monologue of self-loathing with no point and no pay off. If I want that, I can just listen to the running monologue in my own head. I use fiction to escape my self-hatred, not the other way around. Finally, in chapter three, we meet the hero, things sort of pick up, and we find out that she has lusted after him since childhood but we are given no reason as to why she has never voiced her feelings or why they have never acted on whatever mutual attraction they have. So that is a mystery and we are instead given more of her inner monologue of self-loathing with the added bonus of finding out she’s basically a well-loved, spoiled girl who somehow believes she’s been wronged by all that love. She’s childish and self-absorbed and not in a charming way, just in an obnoxious, makes you want to slap her and tell her to grow up, get some therapy, and get over herself kind of way. By the end of chapter four, our heroine still comes off as so flakey, I am not convinced she is going to stick around and turn this into a romance novel. She seems like a flight risk and may very well grab her passport and bail on this poor man who probably deserves better than this girl who still has yet to display any redeeming qualities. I couldn’t bring myself to read further. I stayed up all night to read The Hating Game. I read it dozens of times. DOZENS. This is such a disappointment. I’m not sure I’m going to continue reading. I might just suck up the full price I paid and go read The Hating Game again and pretend this whole experience never happened. As an aside, I will say I am holding whomever edited this book accountable for it going off the rails. Sally Thorne is a lovely writer with tremendous talent and this book either needed a different editor or more direction or something. If you are undecided, maybe skip it. Just re-read The Hating Game and wait for her third novel. At a bare minimum, read the sample before you buy.