The Hating Game Audiobook Review | The Audio Book Entrée

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne is the enemies-to-lovers romance that started a trend — the book that proved the formula could be done with genuine wit, genuine heat, and genuine emotional depth. Narrated by Romy Nordlinger with perfect comic timing and warmth, the audiobook is an absolute delight from the first chapter to the last.

You can listen to The Hating Game using the current Audible offer; any complimentary audiobook benefit depends on your country and account.

What Is The Hating Game About?

Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman are executive assistants to the co-CEOs of a publishing company formed by a merger. They share an office, they share a boss, and they absolutely cannot stand each other. They play games — the Staring Game, the Smile Game, the Mirror Game — and the tension between them is so thick you could cut it. Then they are both shortlisted for the same promotion, and everything changes.

The Hating Game is a masterclass in romantic tension. Thorne understands that the best enemies-to-lovers stories are not about people who genuinely hate each other — they are about people who are so intensely aware of each other that the line between irritation and attraction becomes impossible to maintain. Lucy is warm, colourful, and compulsively likeable. Josh is cold, precise, and utterly unreadable. The push and pull between them is the engine of the entire book — and Thorne never lets it become predictable.

Romy Nordlinger's Narration

Romy Nordlinger is the ideal narrator for this material. She captures Lucy's warmth and self-deprecating humour perfectly, and her rendering of Josh — cooler, more controlled, always slightly threatening — creates a genuine sense of two distinct personalities in constant friction. The audiobook runs just over 9 hours, and Nordlinger makes every minute of it feel alive.

"The Hating Game is the book that made enemies-to-lovers a mainstream romance staple. Nordlinger's narration is the reason the audiobook version is, for many listeners, the definitive way to experience it."

Why This Works Better as an Audiobook

The banter in The Hating Game is so precisely timed that it benefits enormously from being performed rather than read. The pauses, the emphasis, the shift in tone when Josh says something that could be cruel or could be flirtatious — Nordlinger handles all of it with instinctive skill. There are scenes in this book that are genuinely funny, and they land harder in audio than on the page.

The audiobook also makes the slow-burn tension more visceral. When you are listening rather than reading, you cannot skim ahead to relieve the tension — you have to sit with it, which is exactly what Thorne intends.

Who Should Listen to The Hating Game?

Anyone who loves enemies-to-lovers romance, office settings, or sharp romantic banter. It is also the perfect entry point for readers who have never tried the genre — it is funny enough to work as a comedy, emotionally satisfying enough to work as a love story, and well-crafted enough to work as a novel. If you have already read it, the audiobook is worth revisiting.

Is The Hating Game Worth Your Audible Credit?

Absolutely. At just over 9 hours, it is the perfect one-day listen — funny, swoony, and enormously satisfying. If you have never read an enemies-to-lovers romance, this is the one to start with. And if you have already read it, Nordlinger's performance will make you fall for it all over again.

You can listen to The Hating Game using the current Audible offer; any complimentary audiobook benefit depends on your country and account.