Svea's Reviews > The Pairing

I am devastated to report that this book, it was just not for me. It's definitely a me-thing though.
McQuiston delivers their usual fun, dialogue-heavy, fanfiction-leaning writing filled with lots and lots of pop culture references, and I think I might have just grown out of this particular writing style? I enjoyed it in RWRB on the first read, but noticed my growing annoyance on a reread. For fans of McQuiston's previous books, "The Pairing" might still be the perfect fit.
Though, admittedly, it wasn't just the writing style for me. I was so excited for this book, mainly because it has both two bisexual protagonists and also one of them is nonbinary. And the book did have some nice moments exploring Theo's gender and what it means for either of them - though I was a little confused as to why most of this exploration took place during Kit's pov chapters. But generally I just could not connect to Theo or Kit at all. They were both so... dull and uninteresting, and their initial challenge to find out who manages to bed more people on their wine and dine tour through Europe was such a weird concept with these particular two characters. It just.... didn't work at all for them? I can't quite put my finger on it. I loved the general idea and the concept as such is a really fun one, but here it felt forced more than anything. I also felt no chemistry whatsoever between the two lovebirds, so I didn't care if they got together or not.
Also, is Kit supposed to be a Timothée Chalamet insert or am I seing things? He even has a friggin Peach Scene. I was so confused by this.

The plot, if you can even call it that, is also not exactly exciting. It's basically just one scene after the next scene of nothing really happening, but there's food and wine and sex and plenty of miscommunication (my least favourite romance trope). Even the sex scenes kind of bored me, and they are written in a very flowery way (which is, admittedly, just McQuiston's usual style) that took all the sexiness out of them for me personally. Quite frankly, I started to skim read this at about 50% and refused to dnf it only because I like the author, but that's probably a stupid reason. If I had to summarize my issues with "The Pairing" in one short sentence, it's probably this one: The book lacked the most important ingredient in a McQuiston book, which is heart.

Mind you, mine is definitely an unpopular opinion and I absolutely think this book will appeal to a lot of people. I'm just not among them.

Many thanks to MacMillan and Netgalley for the book - sorry I couldn enjoy this more!