Books like The Hating Game

The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas sends Catalina Marti to her sister's wedding in Spain with the last man she would choose as her fake date: Aaron Blackford, her irritatingly perfect colleague. The office rivals forced into proximity is the direct throughline from The Hating Game, but Armas stretches the timeline across continents, adding family pressure and cultural expectations to the mix.

Both novels build their central tension through workplace interactions where professionalism masks personal feeling. Both feature heroes who appear cold and controlling but reveal their softness through actions rather than declarations.

Armas writes at a longer, more sprawling pace than Thorne, giving her characters more room to circle each other, which means the eventual confession hits with a different kind of weight. If The Hating Game is a sprint to the finish, The Spanish Love Deception is a cross-country run that arrives at the same destination slightly out of breath and all the more satisfied for it.

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood starts with a kiss of convenience and builds into something neither character planned. Olive Smith, a third-year PhD candidate, kisses the notoriously stern Professor Adam Carlsen to prove to her best friend that she has moved on from an ex. Adam plays along, and a fake dating arrangement spirals into real attachment.

The power dynamic is different from The Hating Game's peer rivalry, since Adam holds institutional authority over Olive's academic career, but Hazelwood handles it with care. Both novels trade on the appeal of a male lead who is widely feared but secretly devoted to one specific person. Both write sexual tension through small physical details: a hand on a back, a too-long glance, the charged air in a shared space.

Hazelwood's academic setting gives the banter a nerdier inflection than Thorne's corporate office, but the fundamental rhythm of verbal sparring as foreplay is identical.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert follows Chloe, a chronically ill web designer, who enlists her building superintendent Red Morgan to help her work through a list of spontaneous experiences. Their initial friction comes from mutual misunderstanding rather than workplace competition, but the dynamic feels familiar to Hating Game readers: two people who irritate each other because they are paying too much attention.

Hibbert writes with more overt warmth than Thorne, and her characters discuss their feelings with greater directness, but the tension still builds through accumulated interactions rather than single dramatic moments. Chloe is pricklier than Lucy Hutton and more willing to use sharpness as a defense, which gives the eventual softening more impact.

Red, like Josh Templeman, is a physically imposing man who turns gentle for exactly one person. Hibbert also brings disability representation into the romance genre with care and specificity, adding dimensions that make Chloe a fuller character than the trope alone would produce.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang takes the structured-arrangement-becomes-real-love formula and grounds it in a specific character perspective. Stella Lane, an econometrician on the autism spectrum, hires escort Michael Phan to teach her about physical and romantic intimacy. The initial transaction gives way to genuine connection as both characters reveal vulnerabilities they had not planned to share.

Where The Hating Game builds attraction through antagonism, The Kiss Quotient builds it through negotiation and gentle boundary-setting, which creates a different kind of tension that is no less electric. Both novels feature heroines who approach relationships with analytical minds and find love interests who appreciate their precision rather than dismissing it. Hoang writes with unusual attention to sensory detail, making every touch and reaction feel calibrated, much as Thorne tracks Lucy's physical awareness of Josh in granular detail.

Both books understand that the sexiest thing a romance hero can do is pay attention.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry pits literary agent Nora Stephens against editor Charlie Lastra in a professional rivalry that follows them from Manhattan to a small North Carolina town. Henry writes their combative chemistry with the same precision Thorne brings to Lucy and Josh, tracking every verbal jab and loaded silence.

Both novels feature heroines who are ambitious and unapologetic about it, refusing to soften themselves for likability. Both pair those heroines with men who match their intensity point for point.

The key structural difference is that Book Lovers spreads its narrative across a wider cast, using Nora's relationship with her sister as a counterweight to the romance, while The Hating Game keeps its focus almost exclusively on the central pair. Henry's prose is more literary than Thorne's, but both writers understand the same fundamental principle: the moment an enemies-to-lovers romance tips is not when the characters kiss but when they first see each other clearly.

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle reverses the enemies-to-lovers formula by starting with a couple who have already stopped trying. Naomi and Nicholas are engaged but miserable, each privately hoping the other will call off the wedding. Instead of breaking up, they escalate into a war of petty sabotage that accidentally reignites the spark between them.

The Hating Game readers will recognize the escalation pattern: small provocations that reveal how well each person knows the other, weaponized attention that looks like hostility but is actually intimacy. Hogle writes the competitive dynamic with the same glee Thorne brings to Lucy and Josh's staring contests and elevator races. The difference is that Hogle's couple has history, so their rediscovery carries a different weight, less about first love and more about choosing each other again.

Both books deliver the specific satisfaction of watching two stubborn people run out of excuses not to be happy.

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary puts Tiffy and Leon in a shared apartment where they never overlap: she sleeps in the bed at night, he sleeps in it during the day. They communicate through Post-it notes left around the flat, and feelings develop through handwriting and small domestic gestures before they ever share airspace.

The setup is the opposite of The Hating Game's face-to-face confrontation, but the effect is surprisingly similar: two people getting to know each other through accumulated detail, building a picture of who the other person is before deciding what they feel about it. O'Leary writes with gentler humor than Thorne, and her characters are less combative, but the slow revelation of character through daily interaction mirrors the way Lucy catalogs Josh's habits and tells herself it is strategic intelligence rather than attraction.

Both books argue that paying attention is the first act of love, whether that attention comes through hostile surveillance or Post-it notes about leftovers.