Rating: 5🌈

The Pairing is one of my top two books of the year.  A absolute masterpiece of a book, a gastronomical tale and a oenophile’s dream journey that’s a bisexual and nonbinary romance of rediscovery and enduring love set upon the landscape of some of Europe’s most beautiful and ancient cultural heritage sites and tiny restaurants. 

There really aren’t enough pages or words to describe how much I love this. 

Just be prepared to be hungry, and thirsty and , frankly feeling like you need something, want something, because you’re not eating, drinking, being there smelling the aromas, luxuriating in the heat or atmosphere of any of the scenes or moments the characters have pulled you into. It’s a sensory experience, an overload of energy and emotional experience on so many levels. That’s how vivid the writing, how gloriously beautiful the characters and how deeply their story envelopes you into the journey. 

At its most basic, it’s a story of two childhood friends who loved each other. Became lovers for two years, parted angrily on an airplane ride to London, on their way to a special food and wine vacation. It was supposed to be a start of many things together but it was an end. 

Four years later, the two people unexpectedly use the vouchers for that same vacation and see each other once again. 

It sounds simple but it’s anything but. 

Author Casey McQuiston brings the reader into the lives of longtime friends and now exes, Theo Flowerday, assistant sommelier and 

Kit Fairfield , pastry chef, in an imaginative format. Half the book belongs to the perspective of Theo, a California native and assistant sommelier who has finally decided to move on from the past, take the vacation they had planned to go on, and put an end to a failed relationship they have never fully recovered from. We see the beginning, the end. And then the entire new journey four years later from Theo’s perspective. 

At midpoint, at a certain time in the vacation and this couple’s renewed relationship, McQuiston switches the narrative over to Kit, appropriately, where we follow the same path.  First their beginning. The end . And then his perspective on how they reconnected and what the years have done to them, the changes, as well as the misunderstandings and mistakes made.  By both. 

Theo is at first described as bisexual but it’s no surprise to the reader that part of the conversation and story is Theo’s acceptance , or more embracing their identity as a nonbinary person. Kit , throughout the book, is a clearly bisexual man who has a deep sense of self and the enjoyment of sex.   

Sex, along with wine, food, art and the landscapes, is as much a part of the story as the characters. Theo and Kit have sex, and not just with each other. For those uncomfortable with this aspect of the story or the characters, remember they aren’t in a romance at the time and Europe looks at relationships differently in some ways.  Plus vacation romances are, as they say, a thing. It all plays out sensually and believably true to heart. 

I fell into the story, the lives of the characters, and the incredible journey the author takes us on, a map having been provided at the beginning of the book should the reader want to follow along. 

I saw places where I’d visited through a new standpoint, had fresh views on artists and history tossed around that had me thinking and reaching for my own old references and notes. And then submerging myself in this cornucopia of narrative sensual characters, fully developed elements and places that can’t be appreciated in one reading.  

I might need to book myself a vacation. 

I’m highly recommending this as one of my top two books of the year. A narrative masterpiece of the senses. 

Enjoy.

Buy link

Amazon.comhttps://www.amazon.com › Pairing…The Pairing: Special 1st Edition: McQuiston, Casey: 9781250862747

Blurb 

LIMITED FIRST PRINT RUN–featuring sprayed edges with a stenciled script design. Only available for a limited time and while supplies last.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston’s latest romantic comedy, two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they’re over each other―except they’re definitely not.

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.

Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but―yeah. It’s in the past.

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. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

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. It’s fine. There’s nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And 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.

“The summer’s best romance novel.” – Rolling Stone

“Spicy, sexy and absolutely delicious.” – People

“Move over ‘hot girl summer’ – ‘hot bisexual summer’ is ready for its moment and Casey McQuiston’s new novel The Pairing is here to usher it in.” – USA Today

• Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin (August 6, 2024)
• Publication date: August 6, 2024
• Language: English
• Print length: 395 pages