Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Hating Game.
I love rom-coms. They're joyful, they're romantic, of course, and they deliver on what they promise: a happy ending. As a book lover, I devoured The Hating Game along with many others, so I was especially excited to see the film adaptation. And because I recently reread it, I decided it would be fun to point out how it differed from the book — and all the small details from the book that were included!
1. In the book, Josh wears a rotating variety of specifically colored shirts to work, as is mentioned in the movie, but in the book the colors are slightly different.
2. In the book, Lucy is acquaintances with the UPS driver who delivers her Smurf packages. In the movie, it's her coworker — Danny Fletcher — who delivers the package to her.
3. In the book, Danny is way more competitive with Josh over Lucy. There's even a whole "puff my chest out and mark my territory" scene at work to establish that Lucy's gone out with Danny. In the movie, he's way more chill and goofy.
4. In the book, Lucy drives a very unreliable Honda. In the movie, she relies on public transit.
5. In the movie, after Lucy has a sex dream about Josh, she shows up to work wearing a little black dress — and she's confident about wearing it in front of him. In the book, she doesn't have that confidence at first. She has a hard time deciding whether to leave her coat on or take it off.
6. In the book, Joshua tells Lucy that she has — I kid you not — horny eyes. The man says this to her A LOT. In return, Lucy says he has serial killer eyes. But in the movie, Josh repeatedly tells Lucy that she has serial killer eyes.
7. On their date, Danny tells Lucy about Phillip the goat who participates in parkour, which is tragically not in the book.
8. In the book, Josh doesn't go through her presentation notes in her apartment — which adds another layer of tension in the movie.
9. A personal detail I loved (which was not included in the movie) was the fact that Josh's brother admits he dressed as a dog when he was 12 and made his mom walk him around the block.
10. In the book, Lucy doesn't have a fight with Josh after he puts a stop to sex when she comes over. In the movie, this ends with her leaving abruptly and on a conflicting note.
11. In the book, Danny is actually the one to initiate friendship between him and Lucy. He seems to understand that after their kiss, the chemistry isn't there. In the movie, Danny pines over Lucy for a good bit.
12. In the book, Josh's room is blue — which we later discover is the same shade as Lucy's eyes. In the movie, his room is an emerald green, most likely because Lucy Hale's eyes are not blue.
13. In the movie, Josh shows up out of the blue to Lucy's apartment to remind her she agreed to come to the wedding. In the book, they leave from work, eat at a diner, and she takes a turn driving his car before they arrive at the hotel.
14. In the movie, Josh and Lucy have sex before the wedding, which is before Lucy finds out JOSH'S BROTHER IS MARRYING HIS EX. That is...not a great move! In the book, not one, but TWO sex scenes (one of them is a shower scene) occur AFTER the wedding.
15. And don't get me started on how — in the movie — Lucy takes one look at Josh's dick, then two seconds later he's inside her.
16. And in the book, Lucy tells Josh about her sex dream in the car on the way to the hotel (how it was really about him) — not in the hotel room after they have sex.
17. Lucy stands up for Josh in front of his dad at the actual wedding in the movie. In the book, this occurs at brunch after the wedding is over.
18. In the film, Lucy overhears a conversation Josh has with his boss that makes her think he's playing a game with her in order to win that promotion — that his feelings aren't real. We THINK it's because we've seen him snoop through her notebook. This scene doesn't exist in the book.
19. Lucy's idea for her interview presentation is different in the film. She decides to create an online forum community where readers can interact with each other and with authors, basically helping them create the story in real time. In the book, she decides to merge backlist titles into ebooks.
20. Josh is SUCH A GYM RAT in the book, but in the movie it's barely mentioned.
21. Josh tells Lucy he resigned from B&G in his bedroom after the wedding in the book, but in the movie they let her go into her interview thinking she's competing against him, then reveal he's leaving at the end.
22. Finally, in the book, Josh is leaving for a company called Sanderson Print. In the movie, he's leaving for a real publishing company called HarperCollins.
Now let's dive into some tiny details that made it into the film!
23. One on-the-nose detail the movie included was the exact same opening line as the book!
24. Another accurate detail from the book is Lucy's sleepysaurus shirt that she wears when she's sick.
25. They also chose to keep the way Josh's boss, Bexley, calls him "Doctor Josh."
26. Of course, they also kept the nickname Josh calls Lucy.
27. One super-specific detail they included from the book is the line, "If I was flirting with you, you'd know it."
28. And a very on-point detail they kept was the mysterious markings Josh makes in his planner, which comes up later in the movie.
29. Also, during the closet scene, Lucy tells Josh to put his hands on her, and he replies with, "Put them on yourself," which we also see him say in the book, word for word.
30. Another detail they kept is the fact that Lucy was raised on a strawberry farm, hence the nickname Josh gives her.
31. Another line they kept from the book is from Lucy's heated speech she gives to Josh's dad: "Josh is who keeps it all running. Both of us do." And, "I like you all. Except you."
32. Finally, one more tiny detail they kept from the book was the name of Lucy's signature lipstick, Flamethrower.
In conclusion, Danny Fletcher deserved better. Kidding. (I'm not kidding.)
