The Pairing is a romantic comedy novel about two bisexual childhood best friends, now exes, who find themselves on the same European food and wine tour. Theo and Kit broke up spectacularly just before they went on their dream European holiday, but now they’re both using up their voucher at the same time. Shocked, they struggle to navigate their new dynamic, until they start a competition to see who can sleep with the most local people during their tour. Will holiday hookups help them work out how they feel about each other now?
My short review of The Pairing is that I had a great time reading it—I read it entirely on a train, which suits it perfectly, and I loved the combination of sumptuous food and locations with a messy yet sweet story of what if you know someone so well, but broke up. Of course, most of the things about it are ridiculous—Theo is the outsider in a Hollywood family, both Theo and Kit are ridiculously good with wine and pastry respectively, everyone in every European destination is bi and wants to sleep with tourists—but you don’t need to be picking it up looking for realism. Sometimes you just want a book that combines pretentious descriptions of eating and drinking with references to John Wick (especially for me as a fan of action films, trying food, and travelling).
One of the characters is non-binary, though they only come out to the other protagonist later into the book (but there’s plenty of hints in the narrative before this), and I liked how this was done, showing someone who is still working out all the details of how they are non-binary in the world, but also who has had time to develop as a person, even if they are still learning about what they want to be and do. As a non-binary person myself, it’s nice to have books that feature different non-binary experiences, and this one really focuses on what makes you feel good. Both Theo and Kit are flawed characters who don’t always make good choices (as you’d tend to expect from characters in a romance novel), but there’s also a sense throughout the book of the ways they have and still need to grow, and even that breaking up was what they needed to work out who they were separately before they could be together again.
As the premise might suggest, there is a lot of sex in this book, and I imagine that their hookup competition will put off some readers who only want the protagonists in a romance novel to be interested in or sleep with each other. I liked what it brought to the book, playing with the classic idea that you need to prove you’re in a better place sexually and romantically than an ex.
The Pairing is probably the McQuiston books I’ve enjoyed the most, as a lot of the elements were things up my street, like the food and drink tour, film references, best friends turned lovers turned exes, and the ways queerness fit into everything. Yes, it’s ridiculous and unrealistic, but that makes for a fun book that’s ideal to get engrossed in whilst travelling or as an escape, and it also has a message about needing to work out who you are as an adult and what you actually want that I liked alongside this.
Fiendfully Reading 
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