The Pairing
Reviews
God bless the gays and for bless Casey McQuiston.
the incorporating of the love of each other to the love of their surroundings ya know pairingggggg (lol) was really lovely and enjoyable but did every now and then feel like it drifted from the plot and purpose of everything.
probably will end up rating this higher the more i sit with it for sure but as I’ve just finished and the last 20 pages almost felt like a wrap up after thought and that kind of killed the flow for me.
Delightful in all the best ways: the wit, yearning, angst, fluff. A lot of really good lines that are absolute bangers. This was a queer love story but also a love story for Europe.
I wish I had liked it more, I think I was more into the queer love story than the Europe love story and so some parts felt slow for me. Bogged down by information that I didn’t really care about. The miscommunication and “will they won’t they” tropes got tedious for me as well.
So much heart!! SO much GENDER!!! So gorgeous all I can think to do is lay out on the grass in some pastoral hills with a bottle of wine and cry about it!!!!!
Beautiful and heartbreaking. A love story so intense it will crush you and make you feel its warmth all at once.
This was really sweet, well written, and enjoyable to read. Definitely the strongest romance that Casey McQuiston has written so far.
The only reason I don’t give this 5 stars is because the story tried so hard to convince me that the main characters were conventionally attractive and their only flaws were “too romantic” and “too emotionally guarded.” It just didn’t make for memorable leads. That’s just a nitpick in what was otherwise a really fun read.
Very funny and so full of emotion, heart, and warmth. And steamy- this is an open door romance. I didn't think I would like a "second chance" romance, it's just not something that ever appealed to me. But I trust McQuiston and I trusted the process. The payoff was so worth it. The progression of the relationship between Kit and Theo was so satisfying. From estrangement to friends to... more. Ugh, so beautiful.
Gahhhh. I don’t have words for how much I loved this. I want to reread it immediately.
🦇 The Pairing Book Review 🦇
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
❓ #QOTD If you could travel anywhere for the summer, where would you go? ❓
🦇 Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. It's not until they 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 stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. Will it be too much, or a reminder that a small taste can make you crave what you can't have?
💜 Pairs well with: healing hearts long bottled up but aged well, a decadent glass of light-bodied wine with hints of cherry (memories of sweet syrup spilling down warm wrists on a hot summer's day), and a lover's kiss (their taste stained against your lips). I don't know what I was thinking, reading I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Red, White, & Royal Blue, then The Pairing all back to back in a rushed, heart-aching CMQ marathon for Pride Month, but WOAH does my heart hurt. The Pairing is the perfect rom-com summer read. This story will whisk you away on a tour of Europe, inviting you to feast on local cuisine until adjectives tantalize and taunt your tastebuds, soothing you like a rich glass of red (smooth and velvety, bursting with flavors of ripe plum, black cherry, and toasted cedar, sparking unfamiliar memories). If you adored Red, White, and Royal Blue (namely, the queer references and quotes pulled from history), the exploration of Europe's never-ending artistry and ageless anecdotes will no doubt tug at your heartstrings. Nevermind the detailed descriptors, the pristine explorations of pastries, pasta, wine, and wonder. Let's talk about Kit and Theo.
💜 CMQ does an outstanding job at Show, Don't Tell throughout the entire novel. Too often, there's a moment in second-chance romances, a piece of the past that broke a meant-to-be couple apart, that SO many novels reveal all too quickly. CMQ doesn't hinge the entire story on that reveal, nor is it unveiled too soon. Instead, we're given the chance to understand Theo and Kit's points of view, not about that ONE defining moment, but about everything; how they came to be, what their lives were becoming, the lost possibility. These two characters feel SO much, but those emotions are never defined with clear-cut words, forcing readers to accept those feelings. Emotions aren't so cut and dry, nor singular; they're a tangle, a messy knot of hurt and longing, love and betrayal. Instead, we experience them through glimpses of the past and present. We heal alongside them. I'm grateful the story focused on Theo's POV first, THEN switched to Kit's during a pivotal moment of their present. We experience Theo's still raw pain and self-doubt before delving into Theo's everlasting love and regret.
💜 I just, I CAN'T. I didn't last a single chapter without making a mess of annotations. I've lived a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-back-to-lovers, second-chance romance. I know that feeling of one person being your everything, regardless of time and distance. CMQ captures it fully.
💙 My only hang-up: this story relies on the miscommunication trope to survive, not only in the present, but the past that broke Theo and Kit apart in the first place. The execution is flawless, though, giving it realistic reasoning instead of simply using it as a plot piece. I'd also like to point out that the description you read online, regarding the hookup competition, is hardly the story's real focus. It's like the garnish for an already sublime cocktail. You can do without.
🦇 Recommended for fans of Jandy Nelson, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and all things CMQ.
✨ The Vibes ✨
🍷 Bi4Bi
🥐 Queer Romance
🍷 Europe Tour
🥐 Second Chance Romance
🍷 Friends to Lovers to Enemies to Lovers
🥐 Dual POV
🍷 Food, Wine, History, Art, Culture
🦇 Major thanks to the author and publisher for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #ThePairing
💬 Quotes
❝ The problem is, we’ve only ever been everything or nothing to each other. I don’t know how to start being something to him. ❞
❝ It’s not just that I want him. It’s that he taught me what wanting was. ❞
❝ I wonder if anyone else in the whole blackberry-jam galaxy has ever loved someone so much that it made their soul feel fixed in their body. ❞
❝ An expression of delighted awe dawns on Theo’s face, and in it I see layer after layer, old self after intermediate self after current self, the Theo I met as a child and the Theo I got to call mine and the Theo who fills her own body. They’re all here, hanging in the air, harmonizing with one another. Maybe they’re always here. Maybe she feels so familiar and so new to me now because I’d heard the beginning note but not the completed chord. I knew her before her arches had points, before the paint to finish her had been invented. What a wonder, what a miracle: somehow, more of her. ❞
❝ My favorite parts of me are the ones that Theo brings out, the ones that grew to match theirs. ❞
❝ I could love that ongoing, extant Theo again. There’s so much romance in that, so much beauty in learning how much my heart can endure. Sometimes I think the only way to keep something forever is to lose it and let it haunt you. ❞
❝ If I can give my whole heart to love without fearing the cost, I will regret nothing. ❞
I absolutely adored this story, and it was accidentally perfectly aligned with summer reading and Pride month!
Kit and Theo are so perfectly flawed, I was invested in their personal stories, friendship, and love story from start to finish. This is a love letter to queerness and acceptance, showing our characters growing into themselves and accepting each other fiercly.
The cast of side characters throughout the book didn't take away from the main progression, but provided just enough charm and humour.
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
Wow. This book is so freaking beautiful and queer and sexy and absolutely romantic.
The Pairing follows Theo and Kit on a European food and beverage tour, they just happen to be exes who haven’t seen each other in four years.
McQuiston is such an amazing author and I love their ability to create these amazing authentic characters. I fell in love with and my heart broke for both Theo and Kit. There is so much pining and angst but also sweetness and acceptance; it’s perfectly balanced like some of the pairings in the book.
I feel so lucky to have been able to go on this journey with them. There is so much character growth and I loved how their past and present selves are reconciled. I also came out of this experience very hungry for European pastries, which is only sort of a euphemism. This book is hot. I was afraid the hook up game might take away from a relationship between Kit and Theo but everything is so well crafted and aids in helping them figure out what they want and need.
I love this book. I want everyone to read it. It is gorgeous and shows two beautifully queer characters being beautifully queer.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC, all opinions are purely mine and freely given.
Highlights
I open my eyes to see dark green shutters across from us, a cat lounging on the sill behind them. It's one of those small details that reminds me these places are real and belong to people we'll rarely meet while passing through, that Florence will forget us even if we remember it for the rest of our lives. I find it terribly romantic, the evanescence.
I've always agreed with the French that a meal should begin with sweetness, but I'm beginning to wonder if the Italians have it right - if, sometimes, discovery wants bitterness first.
When I moved to Paris, Dad told me to guard my wonder. He said that the danger of living in a place of dreams is that it can become ordinary. His exact words were, Novelty is half of sublimity, [...]. Still, somewhere during the long hours at work making the same gelée for three months straight, I lost my appetite for taking in the view on my way home. I stopped noticing all the beauty that once astonished me when I read about it in books.
[...] it left me not long after Theo but much more quietly. I barely noticed until Bordeaux, when I stepped off the bus at the château and felt wonder return like an old friend. Every stop since, I've slowly unfolded, opening to it again.
"Those men are terminally straight." "Nobody's straight on a European vacation." "Sounds like you're speaking from experience." I observe, picturing Kit picking up tourists at bars in Montmartre. "Historic precedent. They switch everyone to bisexual at passport control" "Damn, that's what the stamp's for Could've skipped the line."
"Do you think he's always part of the tour" I ask Kit. "Like, when they know guests are coming, they have him come in to provide an immersive hot farmhand experience?" "I think they buried a bunch of French romance novels in the garden and he's what sprang up.
"It's Florence for me," I tell them when they ask what destination I'm most looking forward to. "They'll have the best wine. And the best collection of butts carved out of marble."
A weird spark of loss swirls up, like when Kit and I would watch a show together and I would find out he'd skipped ahead without me. Like I should have known this, somehow.
"I like reading E.M. Forster because it's always gay, even though this one is about a man and a woman," he says. "Do you know how sometimes when you read or watch or listen to something, there's a ...resonant homosexual flavor? Not even in anything the characters are explicitly doing or saying, but in the voice, or how the flowers are described or a character looks at a painting, or the way they see and react to the world. Like when Legolas and Gimli walk into Minas Tirith and immediately start criticizing the landscaping."
I turn the idea over in my head. "Sort of like how I love older action movies because they're inherently homoerotic."
He exhales a short laugh through his nose. "I can't wait to find out what you mean by that."
"Kit. Come on. How many times have you watched Point Break with me? And how many times did we watch Speed? Those are two of the best action movies of the early nineties, and at their heart, both are about Keanu Reeves having this intense, soul-deep connection with the other lead, this crazy chemistry engine that works so well it's basically sex. The only difference is that one is Sandra Bullock and one is Patrick Swayze."
Kit touches his fingers to his lips, like he's thinking hard now. "I never thought of it that way."
"Or Road House! Or Top Gun!" I go on, propelled. "All the greatest action movies of the eighties, the most grab-ass, baby-oiled, hyper-masculine movies ever made, don't work without this underlying sense of everyone's dick being hard the whole time. That, that is fucking gay! They made the loop all the way around to gay! And that's the secret sauce. Nowadays everyone's so afraid of accidentally making a gay movie that nobody's dick is hard, which is why there hasn't been a truly iconic action hero in the last twenty years." I spit out a cherry pit and add, "Except John Wick."
I loved and resented how good he was at the parts of life I was worst at, and once he was gone, I let resentment win. I made my love into a power drill and built a life I could keep in order myself, because you can't miss something you don't need anymore.
Nobody's straight on a European vacation.
...
Historic precedent. They switch everyone to bisexual at passport control.
As far as I know, there are two ways to get over someone: Surrender to the anger that's already there, or invent something to get angry about. Sometimes it was always wrong, and the only thing to so is stop believing it was good to love them in spite of it. But sometimes they were good to you. Sometimes you go looking for kindling and find that green leaves won't burn, that the garden was watered too well. Sometimes you have to rearrange the truth into something you won't miss.
And sometimes, when enough time goes by, it gets hard to remember which one you did.
The problem is, we've only ever been everything or nothing to each other. I don't know how to start being something to him.
The first time I kiss Kit, he tastes like jalapenos and apricots.
You get in your own way.
The truth is, I never stopped loving that person. I only stopped believing he existed.
“Sometimes it was always wrong, and the only thing to do is stop believing it was good to love them in spite of it. But sometimes they were good to you. Sometimes you go looking for kindling and find that green leaves won’t burn, that the garden was watered too well. Sometimes you have to rearrange the truth into something you won’t miss.
And sometimes, when enough time goes by, it gets hard to remember which one you did.”
They showed me the galaxy, then made me feel it. That's one of Theo's natural gifts, the way beauty moves through them like stained glass.
My favorite parts of me are the ones that Theo brings out, the ones that grew to match theirs.
“You’re…expansive. You take up space. You make the world bigger to fit you. So, no, I'm not surprised you can't fit inside one idea of gender."
"I don't necessarily see myself as any particular, static thing," Theo goes on, "but if I have to pick, non-binary is the closest. Definitely some shade of trans. I just know l'm a lot of stuff, but one thing I'm not is a woman. Does that make sense?"
Truthfully, it wouldn't matter if it made sense. I would accept anything about Theo even if it didn't agree with any laws of this world or the next.
The thing about loving Kit is, it’s objectively the best thing that could happen to anyone. There’s a reason it’s happened to so many people by accident.
It's not just that I want him. It's that he taught me what wanting was. Anyone would have a weakness for that.
The truth is, I never stopped loving that person. I only stopped believing he existed.