The Pairing is without a doubt Casey McQuiston’s horniest book – it’s also their most sensual one, filled with lush descriptions of food and luxury locales and tourist spots. And yet it’s also the weakest book I’ve read of theirs. The author knows what they’re doing when the book opens with a quote from Mr. Emerson’s impassioned speech about love to Lucy Honeychurch from A Room with a View. The author uses this quote to let the reader know that no matter how many people Kit and Theo, our leads, sleep with throughout the course of this book, their forever is always going to always be each other. But on the way to true love, they go through a lot of other partners, to the point where their romance ends up feeling short changed. Which is a shame, because the warmth the two generate when they’re actually together is fabulous. 

Theo Flowerday (yes, really) and Kit Fairfield have known one another for ages. They grew up together and became best friends, then got together during a memorable Halloween party when they were twenty-two, where they dressed up as Sonny (Kit) and Cher (Theo), and their intense year-long relationship that followed felt like forever. Then, when they embark upon a European-based wine and food tour, they have a huge argument at the airport. Kit ditches Theo when they land in London, and Theo immediately flies home to her megarich family, and Kit goes on to France and beyond.

Four years later, Theo is splitting her time between tending bar and using her sommelier’s license. She is determined to Make It On Her Own, even if that involves failing spectacularly. Though everyone in her family – including her sisters – have money, being a part of the film industry (Russell Crowe is namedropped as Theo’s godfather* ), she refuses to take it, or allow them to bail her out, for fear of being accused of being a nepo baby. Kit has become a pastry chef rockstar in France and is sexually popular with everyone around him. The tickets they had purchased four years earlier are just about to expire, so individually, Kit and Theo decide to go on that trip.

They’re initially horrified to see each other, but since they’re trapped with each other for the next three weeks, why not make things interesting? Theo suggests they have a little competition – who can seduce their hot Italian tour guide first? Then why not expand that – which of them can seduce the most people during the tour? Surely this won’t backfire in their faces and make them want one another?

Hah. Well, there’s only so much outside monkeying around I can take between the main characters of a romance before I raise my hand and call foul, and The Pairing takes us far beyond that number. Aside from I Kissed Shara Wheeler, which is about teenage confusion – the romantic immaturity makes sense as a plot point – this is the only McQuiston book I can call to mind that features the leads having frequent sexual contact with other people beyond the midpoint of the book. Sure, the blurb mentions a “full-on European hook-up competition” so this is a pre-warned for plot point, but surely there’s a way to do this in romance that makes it feel well, romantic. Here Kit and Theo come off like jerks using blandly hot, personality-less fellow bisexuals (and this is a world that generally seems to lack many other flavors of queer) so they can play sexual chicken with each other. As hard as McQuiston has Theo long for Kit, and as many people as they use like a strap-ons between them, it’s difficult to believe they deep-down forever love each other. Maybe they should be part of a polycule.

There’s also a note of the Horny Bisexual stereotype here – and as a bisexual, I feel comfortable calling the book out on this topic. I’m a bisexual/pansexual sex positive horndog, and even I felt at times like the book was a kitchen sink stereotype collection of ugly comments I’ve heard too many times about indecisive promiscuity. All of this could be solved with actual conversations, but Theo, in particular, would rather die than actually talk about their feelings. The two of them miscommunicate and strike out at each other CONSTANTLY and it’s so annoying.

Theo comes out as nonbinary part way through the trip, and I wish she/themself had been given the chance to process their nonbinary identity in a PoV chapter or two; having all of that happen through Kit’s PoV is an odd choice. Those chapters are, however, the most tender, and the closest I came to finding them credible as a couple that will last.

And then there’s the shallow sense of luxury consumerism that pollutes the book. While some of McQuiston’s characters have been rich brats, they’ve always been relatable, likable people. Heck, Henry in Red White and Royal Blue is a wonderful guy and he’s the brother of the future king of England! Red White and Royal Blue also has these touches of luxury, but it never loses sight of the fact that Henry and Alex love each other. One Last Stop and I Kissed Shara Wheeler are more upper-middle-class and I would re-read any of these instead of hearing about how Theo feels so terrible burdened by her rich parents.

What did I like? The traveloguing is fun. I found Kit’s PoV charming. But when I finished reading The Pairing, the only thought in my head was: where is the love?

*The namedrops are weird here, and there are so many. Aside from Russell Crowe, the late Anthony Bourdain gets brought up because Kit wants to fuck him. Since Bourdain’s been dead for years, that’s quite a choice.