Review - The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

Title: The Pairing
Author: Casey McQuiston
Publication Date: August, 2024
Pages: 407
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Genre: Romance
Source: Personal Copy (Book of the Month Club)
Format: Hardcover

Summary (back of the book)
Theo and Kit have been a lot of things; childhood best friends, crushes, lovers, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on a flight to their dream European food and wint tour, they exited each other’s lives.

Time apart has done them good. Theo is a bartender and an aspiring sommelier with a long roster of lovers. Kit graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It’s not until Theo and Kit board the tour bus that they discover they’ve both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they’re trapped with each other for three weeks of the most romantic sights and sensuous flavors of France, Spain, and Italy. But it’ll be fine, as long as they agree they’re absolutely over each other.

So, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is game. In fact, why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can’t have.

Review (there may be a spoiler ahead about one of the characters - so read with caution)
I enjoyed this book. I didn’t fall in love with it, but I really enjoyed it.

I loved all the descriptions of the food and the wine - the characters are on a European food and wine tour - so you’ve got to expect some amazing descriptions and this book didn’t disappoint there.

Here’s the spoiler - one of the characters is non-binary. I loved this representation and it’s my favorite part of the book! I’m not an avid romance reader the way some people are, but I’ve read quite a few. I’ve mainly read books featuring straight, cis couples. Sometimes I’ve read books that have characters that are queer. This is the first time I’ve read a book where a character uses they/them pronouns. Because of the way this information is revealed to the reader (or perhaps because of my own ingrained assumptions), I had actually been picturing one of the characters as a completely different gender for about half the book. As I said above, I loved this twist in the storyline (it’s presented as a bit of a twist) and I love the representation.

My only “complaint” about the book is that I felt that the conflict part of the romance storyline was a low simmer for most of the book. I am used to the more traditional romance arc that involves a great misunderstanding but the characters eventually figure it out. This book was still satisfying in that way, but there was a slowly simmering conflict throughout and no big explosive misunderstanding. I think I kept waiting for it, so that part felt unsatisfying.

Overall I thought this was a great book! Great setting, loved the characters, lots of fun! Any complaints I have are purely personal preference and not a flaw. If you like romance, and if you like food and wine, this is the book for you.

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