Sally Thorne

Sally Thorne is an Australian romance author whose debut The Hating Game is a beloved enemies-to-lovers workplace romance that became a touchstone of the contemporary romance genre.

Sally Thorne’s debut novel The Hating Game has achieved something unusual for a romance novel: it is regularly cited not just by romance readers but by people who don’t typically read the genre as the book that made them fall in love with romance fiction. The setup is a classic enemies-to-lovers premise — two executive assistants at a merged publishing company, deeply opposed in personality and competing for the same promotion, increasingly unable to deny their attraction — but Thorne executes it with exceptional wit, tension, and emotional intelligence.

What distinguishes the book is the quality of the central dynamic. Joshua and Lucy are genuinely funny together, their antagonism is specific and character-revealing rather than generic, and Thorne manages the slow burn with patience and precision. The romantic and sexual tension is earned rather than manufactured, and the resolution, when it comes, delivers the satisfaction the setup promises. The prose is bright and playful, and the book reads quickly.

The criticism of The Hating Game — to the extent there is any — tends to focus on the secondary characters being thin relative to the central two, and on some readers finding Joshua’s behavior in the first half more controlling than romantic. Neither objection is trivial, but the central relationship is strong enough that it consistently wins readers over despite those concerns. For anyone looking to understand why enemies-to-lovers romance endures as a genre, this is the book to read.