Let's Talk Books

Huge thank you to NetGalley, Casey McQuiston, and Pan Macmillan for a galley of this in exchange for an honest review. I am a huge Casey McQuiston fan, Red, White & Royal Blue is one of my all time favourites, it is just so feel good, and yet so emotionally impactful. The Pairing is absolutely in the same vein. If you loved the letters in R,W&RB you will adore this book!

The Pairing follows childhood-best-friends-turned-lovers-turned-exes Theo and Kit, as they find themselves, quite by accident, on the same European food and wine tour after 4 years apart. Theo has turned their life around, and is desperate for Kit to see all the positive, totally-on-top-of-things virtues of the new and improved Theo, and not see the same bad habits! Kit, on the other hand, seems to have actually landed on his feet, living a new, amorous, wildly successful life in Paris… or is he? Across the book both learn how much, and how little, the other has changed. Set across France, Spain, and Italy, and filled with food, wine, art, architecture, and a whole bunch of European hotties, The Pairing asks ‘can you grow apart, and together?’ A delicious queer romp through Europe, that will make you laugh, and might also make you cry, The Pairing is the perfect summer read.

McQuiston is perhaps one of the most lushly descriptive authors I have ever encountered. It is rare in a contemporary romance novel to feel like the world being built is so extraordinarily beyond our own, and yet the detail and feeling McQuiston imbues these locations with is almost fantastical. I suspect this will be especially true for a North American audience, who have less access to the art, architecture, and culture of Europe, but even as someone who has travelled throughout Europe many times, McQuiston blew me away. All of the settings are exceptionally drawn, and populated with fully fleshed characters. The artwork mentioned throughout is handled with tremendous respect, as is the food and wine. I cannot fathom the amount of research needed to build two POV characters, both with such personal love and genuine expertise, and have them both feel so real and so knowledgeable. If you have never been to France, Spain, or Italy, this book is enough to make you want to book a flight, it is a love letter to European culture, and a beautifully penned one at that.

The Pairing was a delight to read, filled with humour and emotion, a few antics, and a lot of feelings! I will say this is far and away one of the most sex-focused books I’ve ever read, (and I’ve read two published by Mills & Boon this year,) but perhaps not in the way you’re thinking! I’d say this is a very sex positive book, and we touch on both character’s personal kinks / pleasure, their relationship together, and their relationship with other people. If you are someone who much prefers closed door romance, with little-to-no discussion of sex, this might not be for you. I think I would described it not as ‘smutty’ but as deeply and purposefully ‘sexy.’

The only thing that holds it back from the full 5 stars, for me, is that I think it went on a little too long. I loved the description, I loved the self-imposed slow-burn of Kit and Theo’s second-chance-romance, but the ’emotional convo / sex / explore a beautiful country drink loads and look at art / emotional convo / sex’ etc. cycle did feel like it lost some momentum about 3/4 of the way through. The last 1/4 was great, but that 3rd one really lagged for me.

Overall, one of the best romances I have read in a long time. Entirely absorbing, heart-breaking, heart-mending, and filled with wanderlust. 4.5 stars.