✍️ Author Link: Sally Thorne

🥰 Who Would Like It?

If you love strong characters, and also like to laugh at how petty people can be when they're playing mind games with each other, then this is the best book in the world. It's romantic, funny, captivating and overall such a good story following people who go from wanting to kill each other, to adorably quirky and romantic love.

🔍 How I Discovered It

I'd seen this book around on my suggested GoodReads list and in Barnes and Noble for a while. What finally got me to read it was a Reddit thread over on r/romancebooks which has a great community and is a prime place for suggestions. I think to date this has been my favorite romance book.

⚠️ Spoilers Below ⚠️

📦 Compressed Summary

Lucy and Joshua are forced to work across from each other after their companies merge, and of course, they come from completely different company cultures. Where Joshua is strict and calculating, Lucy is sweet and passionate about their publishing house. They spend their days playing subtle and extremely petty games to one-up each other.
Lucy's dad throws out a crazy theory that Joshua is an ass to her because he's actually in love with her. This single idea leaves Lucy shocked and causes a long cascade of events, climaxing with Joshua kissing her in an elevator. After that, their petty office games take on a romantic twist.
Their relationship has a few bumps, it's hard to go from pure hate to love all of a sudden, but Lucy ends up unwillingly accompanying Joshua to his brother's wedding for "moral support" to pay back a debt. The wedding works as a catalyst for pent-up emotions and secrets to come out, pushing both Lucy and Joshua to understand each other deeper than ever, realizing that maybe they do get along.

🧠 Thoughts

- What I Liked About It

The writing is not perfect, there are parts from my amateur editor perspective that need polish, but none of this matters because you find yourself so caught up in the story that it somehow adds to the reading experience. Lucy is incredibly likable while Joshua takes a bit more to understand as he is more mysterious, but the contrast between them makes this story. They are equally independent professionals and both unbelievably quirky. Having them not be dependent on each other, but instead supplement what the other lacks is an extremely likable part of their chemistry.

- What I Didn't Like About It

There is the one scene where Joshua stops the elevator and kisses Lucy all of a sudden, and while I get it's mean to be a "heated moment" it took me out of the book. It was too sudden in my opinion, I feel it would have played better if there was some transition leading up to it. The other thing is that the ending scenes of the book went by so fast, which can be a good or bad thing, I guess I was just left wanting more. It's not a perfectly smooth ending where it's sealed with a bow on top, it's more abrupt as if the story is meant to continue without you to see it through.

🤓 Memorable Quotes:

Hating someone feels disturbingly similar to being in love with them. - Lucy, pg. 1

I've always suspected people in our lives are here to teach us a lesson. - Lucy, pg. 158

I'm probably not good at a lot of things, but I will try to be. - Joshua, pg. 178

The trick is to find someone who's strong enough to take it. That one person who can give it back as good as they get. - Joshua, pg. 209