McQuiston's new chaotic second chance romance

     From the bestselling author of Red, White and Royal Blue comes a new romcom set in Europe. Published on August 6th, The Pairing by Casey McQuiston will have you wanting to find your own romance and adventures abroad.
     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.
     I was really excited to read this book (especially since I loved Red White and Royal Blue) but I was not expecting this book to be as long of a read as it was.
     I loved all of the details in the book and the way the food and sites of Europe are described made me want to hop on a plane and fly to Europe myself! However, some do the description and minor details felt too drawn out, in addition to the main romance.
     I enjoyed both Theo and Kit and character (and maybe liked Kit a bit more lol), but the stop and go of their relationship from exes and ex-childhood best friends to tentative fiends, to “yeah we can be friends”, to “let’s have a sex contest”, to pining over one another, to “Pretty Woman”-style ruling for fooling around, to lovers was just way too convoluted and I felt like a lot of extra parts of this book could’ve been cut out to make room for the bigger picture of the novel, which is finding yourself and how loving and accepting yourself can help you love someone else in a new way.
     There was something nice about this novel that made me keep reading it and I really enjoyed the second hand experience of busing France and Italy through the lens of a sommelier in training and pastry chef. And If you love super detailed descriptions of Europe and commentary on food, wine, and art that borders on pretentious, then you’ll enjoy this book.
     However to just pose the elegance of a three week European food and wine tour, this book also involves a chaotic second-chance friends-to-lovers romance with LGBTQ+ representation, and steamy scenes including any combo of only one or both MCs. So if you’re into that, then you might enjoy this book a little bit more than I did.
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*I received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press in exchange for my honest opinion.

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