1.5 stars rounded up because you can tell this was casey mcquiston’s passion project…but i wish they had kept it 200 pages shorter because oh, my, god, this was so long and nothing happened.

took me three months to read this and at the end, it was just a personal vendetta to finish it and not dnf it. got stuck at 70% for an entire month where i’d do anything except pick up my kindle because i knew i had to finish this.

i was SO excited about it because i have loved all of their previous books and the concept of bisexuals in europe sounded awesome. however this felt like watching a very long documentary on a 12-hour flight where they only have the discovery channel available and you don’t even like the show.

the food and wine tour concept was really cool in theory but the incessant amount of descriptions added little to the story because at one point it stopped being interesting and just felt like i was reading a travel guide. it felt very pretentious but in a way that was not enjoyable. i think as a movie it would’ve worked better because the visual aspects would’ve actually attracted the eye but unfortunately there’s only so much description i can tolerate before i feel like i’m reading a manifest.

additionally and very sadly, the competition that theo and kit had going on didn’t even make sense nor it was interesting to see it play out.

also i feel like their reasons to not be together were just not valid enough for me to believe they had any weight. like…i was just like “okay that is literally not a problem???”. and the rant about theo not wanting to act like a nepo baby even though they are was annoying. they were trying to live the poor lifestyle so badly that they forgot that any actual poor person would take their millionaire sister’s gift of money immediately if they were struggling the way theo thought they were.

don’t get me started on theo, actually. i actively disliked them because they were just a contradiction of themselves but also thinking everyone was trying to control them. it was incredibly frustrating to see theit attitude towards everyone in their life. kit was constantly trying to make amends and rebuild bridges, but theo’s reactions were far too impulsive and apathetic about it all.

there is absolutely no development for any side characters and they just seem caricatures at a point because they are severely underdeveloped. the only one i was genuinely interested in was (i forgot her name. oops) kit’s best friend but that was as far as it went.

lastly, and most importantly in the genre, i did not feel a connection between them. the reason behind their breakup and going no contact for 4 years seemed ridiculous at best. but ultimately i did not feel a strong connection between them other than sexually. and they were fighting a lot.

the “bagging people on Europe” bet seemed cool in theory but truly there was never any indication for me to believe they actually could get with all these people, and truly it felt kind of pointless considering most of the bet came from them trying to suppress their feelings. i don’t know, i am not the greatest at difficult talks, but i am of the humble opinion that if they had called each other and talked for thirty minutes, 90% of the problems would’ve been instantly solved.

HOWEVER i will not let these things go unnoticed :
~ lovely exploration of gender and i liked the way kit immediately switched pronouns in his inner monologue for theo. felt refreshing and very sweet and inclusive.
~ i loved that gender nonconformity and acceptance of nonbinary pronouns was never put in question and was not a major plot point. just lovely people being lovely but unfortunately in a very long and tedious book.

i am so incredibly disappointed but will be picking up future CMQ books because as i said, i love them and their books - this one just wasn’t for me.

Kit and Theo, childhood best friends turned lovers, stopped speaking after their devastating breakup. Four years later, they accidentally meet again on a month-long food and wine tour of Europe. After weeks of sightseeing, eating, drinking, and having sex (with other people and each other) they finally come face to face with their still-strong feelings and the reason for their long-ago breakup.

I expected this book to be a carefree romp, and it was. Kit and Theo both have traumas and pasts, but the present and its sensory joys take center stage. There are many lovely and interesting descriptions of wine and food and the sights of France and Italy and Spain. But - there are just so MANY of these descriptions. The tour, and the book, goes on and on, city after city, meal after meal and enticing stranger after enticing stranger, and eventually I began to get indigestion.

In a novel of this length, I wanted more depth, and I had a hard time finding that. Although I liked the writing and found the main characters distinct and relatable, I didn't feel invested in their relationship or in their personal journeys. We never saw either of them in the context of their regular lives, and although references were made to their families we never saw those relationships play out in real time. On top of that, the vacation was (apparently) amazingly well-designed and Kit and Theo amazingly resilient: there was not a single bad meal, linguistic difficulty, unpleasant fellow traveler, or unlivable hostel in the whole trip. (There was one excessively warm room somewhere in Italy. One!)

This gave the novel a leisurely, indulgent feel - but also removed any sense of urgency or conflict. Eventually the beautiful sights and delicious foods and gorgeous bodies began to blend together, an endless romp, a pairing of sweet and more sweet and even more sweet that overwhelmed the palate.
3.5 stars.

I love Casey McQuiston so very much. Their writing is some of my favorite of all time and I’ll happily read anything they write, even if it were a dinner menu.
However, I hate miscommunication tropes, especially when it can be solved incredibly quickly with a simple conversation. I have zero issue with a slutty era, as other say, but perhaps it’s the former abstinence only sex-educated kid in me, but the lack of any kind of mention of STI protection just takes me out. I know, I know, it’s not a fun thing to write about, but I have read other books that specifically mention grabbing a condom or whatever and I love that.
I would also love to go on this vacation, mostly to just enjoy the food and views.
Do I love this book as much as I love RWRB? No. But I will still gladly ready anything Casey publishes and I will read this again later this summer. I do think it’s a fun summery read that many people will enjoy.

I am not sure where to even start this review, because I absolutely adored The Pairing and I don’t quite have the words to summarize my feelings on it. It is rare that I encounter a book that I want to take my time and enjoy. I wanted to lavish in this book forever.

I have read all of Casey McQuiston’s other books and enjoyed them, but they have swept me away with this one. I am a big foodie, so the European wine and food tour was an enchanting setting. I just wanted to sit on my deck with a glass of crisp white while savoring the story.

When Theo and Kit find themselves on a 3 week European food tour together 4 years after their breakup, they have to find a way to coexist. What starts as a fun bet turns into a journey of self discovery, friendship, and love. The ancillary characters are just as complex and fun as the main characters. I wouldn’t mind a spin off following Fabrizio and his tour adventures!

I left this book with a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart. I am excited to share this with my family and friends when it comes out in August!

I’m so sad to give this a low rating because I love Casey McQuiston and their books normally. However, this one bored me and honestly left me confused too many times to count. So much of the book was just jerking off about food and the art, which I didn’t care or know enough about. They often used phrases from other languages without translation that I didn’t care to look up. I ended up skimming often because I didn’t want a history lesson, I wanted a romance.

I thought the spicy scenes were a great representation of a bisexual couple with a nonbinary person, but the actual romance was boring and didn’t really give me anything to root for.

Overall, loved the concept, but it fell flat and was way longer than necessary.

There’s always that sense of anticipation I feel when I pick up the latest release from an author whose work I enjoy. Sadly, the upcoming book by Casey McQuiston (author of my all-time fave, Red White & Royal Blue), resulted in disappointment for me. There were definitely things I liked, but overall, I just didn’t enjoy it.

Kit and Theo were childhood best friends who became lovers, until their relationship disintegrated on a plane to Europe. The breakup led to their canceling a European food and wine tour, and after all their history, they were out of each other’s lives for good.

After 4 years apart, both have moved on. Theo is a bartender who is studying to be a sommelier; Kit went to pastry school, and he now bakes at a fancy Parisian restaurant. When both decide to use their tour cancellation vouchers at the last possible opportunity, they see each other for the first time in 4 years.

Both Theo and Kit haven’t been lacking for sexual relationships during their time apart; both have had male and female lovers. While neither likes watching the other flirt during the tour, they’re both over each other, so why not challenge each other to see who can hook up with more people?

As both throw themselves into the challenge, of course, they realize they’ve never stopped loving each other. But have they truly changed in four years?

One of the things I dislike most in romances is miscommunication. So much of the plot hinged on their inability to express their feelings to one another or discuss what went wrong between them. And while I enjoyed the sumptuous, detailed descriptions of food, wine, and tourist attractions, neither character really appealed to me, and I never believed they really loved each other.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advance copy! The book will publish 8/6.

The Pairing (PUB 08.06) I wanted to love Casey McQuiston's upcoming release, but found is good, not great. What worked: Breathtaking European destinations with copious amounts of mouthwatering food and wine. Dual POV (first half- Theo. second half- Kit). Gender, queerness, and queer relationships represented so well. Sexually open and diverse. So.many.hookups. What didn't work: Sexually open and diverse (yes it worked and didn't). Lack of trademark humor. Pacing- 2nd half was better, but it was slow going. Second chance romance where the emotional back story isn't impactful enough to buy in to the 2nd chance-ness.

A dreamlike road trip around Europe, a delicious food tour, an enthralling romance, and all of the feelings, Casey McQuiston's latest has it all! The food descriptions were chef's kiss and the prose always a delight. A perfect summer read!

Casey McQuiston does it again! With the beautiful backdrop of a European food tour (sign me up please!), McQuiston takes the reader on a journey so rich in detail you'll feel like you've stepped into a French bakery along with Kit and Theo. I was completely wrapped up in Theo's side of the story...until we get more of Kit's side of things. This was a completely different type of novel than McQuiston's previous work but the same humor and LGBTQ+ themes will make her current fans feel right at home too.

Be prepared to order takeout and have a cocktail as you get into this one!

This is an incredibly steamy book that is erotic in all the self indulgent ways - having sex in every possible configuration with every possible person, binge drinking in gorgeous locales, and endless pastries and gorgeous lovers. Having been on similar European vacation itineraries, the fictional tour Theo and Kit take makes all the stereotypical stops and highlights one would expect - wineries in the south of France, riding Vespas in Rome, visiting the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona - and as overindulgent as any vacation tends to be, but with all the boring parts (like long hours in the bus and the sleep and water breaks) completely skipped over. The result is an extremely rich experience that feels very over the top, like eating the fattiest and booziest of tiramisu.

In my opinion, it ultimately worked, because it was very much on theme with the European vacation, and it was also very much in line with who Kit and Theo are as a couple (or a former couple) - ones who overindulge in food and drink and sex, including bringing other people into their sex games. I loved that the one night stands didn't ultimately detract from the main romance. Even while sleeping with other people, both Kit and Theo were thinking of each other, and details of the other hook ups are brief and forgettable.

I loved that Kit and Theo are lifelong friends before becoming lovers, and we enter into this existing relationship at the set up of the book. Their connection is deeper than a typical second chance romance, they have both shaped and been fundamentally shaped by each other from their youngest moments, and are a continuum of each other whether their relationship is romantic or not. It also makes their forgiveness and reconciliation much easier to accept - you may stay forever angry at a lover, but you will typically forgive a family member, knowing you still have an entire lifetime to spend tied to them. Kit and Theo's relationship feels like they are tied together for life.

The bit that is frustrating is that this book has taken the miscommunication trope and spread it out over the entire 432 pages. From their initial break up, to four years later starting up a sex competition to avoid talking about it, Kit and Theo are a couple who are utterly incapable of understanding their own feeling, let alone saying them out loud. While this is eye rolling-ly frustrating at times, it does set up a novel that is also full of some of the most intense pining that I have read in a romance love. Their love for each other fills every page, even as they are denying it, sleeping with other people, running away from it, or are otherwise avoiding it. McQuiston's prose is beautifully romantic, and the deep longing from both Theo and Kit's points of view comes across for the entire book.

I've read all of Casey McQuiston's books and this one is vying with One Last Stop as my least favorite. I'm not sure exactly why I'm just not crazy about this book. It may be the amount of sex, which is not quite my cup of tea.

As always, Casey McQuiston writes romances with such a fun cast of fully-realized characters that you grow to really love over the course of the novel. I really enjoyed getting perspectives from both Theo and Kit, and their romance felt really deep and heartfelt while the food tour, summer across Europe elements were very fun and light. However, at times I did feel like this got a little too montage-y in a way that held the reader at a distance. Second-chance romance is also something I struggle with because I feel like we never get the appropriate depth and history of the relationship, and unfortunately I felt that missing with this book as well. Still, I think this would make a great summer read on the beach or by the pool or on a plane--there's a fun, joyfulness here and the gender stuff was so cool to see in a big romance release like this. Casey continues to go exciting places in their career, even if this one didn't hit quite as high for me as their other titles.

Do not read this book if you are not prepared to want to hop on the next available flight to Europe so you can travel all over and eat all the food and drink all the wine. If you loved Casey McQuinston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, you are going to adore this novel. The Pairing is chock full of McQuiston’s signature humor and signature horniness as two exes, Theo and Kit, travel through France, Italy, and Spain on a food and wine tour. They challenge each other to a hookup competition since they’re totally over each other (except they’re really not), but along the way they realize their dreams just might still include one another.

Once again, thank you so much to St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to review and read Casey’s next book. They are one of my favorite authors and this was truly a huge present to me.

So, when I went into this book, I was kind of nervous about how different it was from Red, White, and Royal Blue, One Last Stop, and I Kissed Shara Wheeler (which I own all of).

But, taking that plunge was a thrilling roller coaster of a book.

Characters: The characters were fleshed out to the point where I forgot they were characters and not living, breathing people. Even the side characters; didn’t need much of a backstory. But, what we were given felt like how people truly think about the strangers they travel with. It also grew into a found family situation, which, made me feel like they were my new family as well.

But, what character stood out to me the most, was Theo. Mostly their thoughts on their gender; I am a genderqueer person who also goes by they/them pronouns. the explanation of their own and their fears about it were perpendicular to mine. It made me feel more connected to them. Especially when Kit asked Theo about their pronouns and the pronouns changed in the story. Not to mention the pressures of being a child of celebrities while being thrust into the limelight. The inner struggles of being a nepo baby hanging over them and being just as good as your celebrity parents.

You could also feel the sexual tensions between Theo and Kit, even when they didn’t even think about being together. On top of that, the sex scenes were very tasteful. Not too much and not too little. It was just the right amount of perfect.

The Setting: You could tell Casey themselves went on the tour, doing their research on European Food, Cocktails/Wine, and Old Renaissance Art. Living in Hostels/Hotels, people-watching in France/Italy/Sicily, and visiting the most famous Museums and Ancient Buildings. I could imagine it just by the words alone. It made me want to go out and do a tour for my wife and me.

Lastly, I was so engrossed in the story that the ‘twist’ towards the end made me a bit angry. It came out of nowhere, cause Casey was known to write love stories. But, at the very end of the book, it made more sense and I teared up. I was so glad they got their happily ever after.

Casey spins a quirky idea into a masterpiece. They and St. Martin’s are going to once again have a best-seller on their hands…and it's going to be wondrous.

I loved the premise, relatively enjoyed the main and supporting characters, was envious of the constantly changing setting, etc. However, the actual story was sometimes so dense with descriptions of food, wine, art, and architecture that McQuiston would lose me. While I did truly enjoy most of the supporting characters, the recall was sometimes challenging when someone would pop back into the story.

3.5 ⭐️ stars for well researched content, character growth (Kit + Theo are still petty af & don’t communicate particularly well), and lots of sexual chemistry and hot bedroom scenes.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Casey McQuiston for this advanced e-copy!

This book is a hard one to review for me! I don’t think I’ve ever described a book as lush before, but honestly I think that’s sums it up perfectly. It is incredibly immersive, and I am about to google European vegetarian food tours, even though I actually think I would hate it.

This book made me audible laugh out loud a few times, and is incredibly witty. It also has some very vulnerable & raw scenes, and I think it was beautifully written.

The only reason I am torn is because it relies heavily on miscommunication to further the plot. I hate miscommunication in books more than anything. It doesn’t compute in my brain, and it makes me want to pull my hair out in frustration. That being said, that is a me problem.

This is my first Casey McQuiston book, so I am going to ignore my least favourite plot device, and rate this book based on everything else!

The Pairing isn’t Red, White, and Royal Blue, but it’s pretty close. It’s the kind of laugh-out-loud romcom where you’re smiling the entire book. Both Theo and Kit were fleshed out and believable characters, and the POV switch worked really well. The story dragged a little in the middle, but the mutual pining was perfect.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Griffin and NetGalley for the ARC!

Casey McQuiston, the writer who gave us the beautiful, spicy, memorable, gay Red, White & Royal Blue, is back this summer with a queer European vacation. But while the descriptions of food and wine are truly mouthwatering, the two protagonists leave something to be desired.

I nearly DNFed this title three times in the first sixty percent, and there were some moments where I wondered aloud if I hated this book. Theo, our AFAB nonbinary bisexual protagonist, is one of the most dislikable characters I’ve read in recent memory. They’re selfish, self-indulgent, reckless, and martyrish. They have a bit of a complex because they’re a nepo baby who wants to be successful on their own, but, shocker, sometimes you need help, even if your family isn’t rich.

Kit, a bisexual man, is Theo’s childhood best friend, and while he’s much easier to like (I started enjoying the book much more when the perspective switched to his from Theo’s), he’s also spoiled and angsty, and together the two of them indulge in the most childish behavior. From failure to communicate to kissing people to make each other jealous to a sex bet (gross) to general angst, Theo and Kit read much more like nineteen-year-olds than the twenty-eight-year-olds they are when most of this book takes place.

While McQuiston still occasionally delights with descriptions of Europe that made me want to get on the next plane to Italy, the scenery and indulgent array of dishes weren’t enough to redeem this one, though I did round my 2.5-star rating up to a 3 because of it.

Younger readers who can see more of themselves in Kit and Theo despite their immaturity may enjoy the study-abroad feel of this novel, but I won’t be recommending it generally.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Now, we all know that Casey McQuiston is one of my most beloved authors. When I received my advanced copy, I almost shed tears of pure joy, because I have been awaiting this book impatiently and I am lucky enough to have had early access to it. I have loved everything they have written, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that I adored this book too.

First of all, brilliant descriptions! This book is stunning, not only landscape-wise but regarding taste and smell too -- absolutely exquisite depictions of desserts, wine profiles and food in general. I felt completely transported when I was reading, there is a perfect balance of emotion and description to take you right along with Theo and Kit on their tour of Europe.

Speaking of, I love them both with all my heart. They are complex and multi-layered and imperfect and unique in their own ways but they still complement each other perfectly. It was an absolute treat to read from both of their POVs, especially as McQuiston does not usually do that in their books. It fits well here, though.

Did I cry? Yes, of course, it is a prerequisite that I cry when I read any of their books for the first time. There's just always so much emotion in their books and written in such a way that it easily resonates within me. And, as usual, incredibly satisfying character development.

After Red, White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop, I should not have been surprised by how well written certain scenes are but. I'm just saying, they're great.

Overall, another masterpiece from my favourite author!

Casey McQuiston knows what the people want. Bisexual Sluts in Europe? Yes thank you very much. Horny and fun and pining. McQuiston has never let me down with a book and I will read anything they write. Can't wait to shove this down the throats of anyone who will listen.