The Pairing

April 15, 2024
The latest from bestseller McQuiston (Red White and Royal Blue) delivers all the hallmarks their readers will expect with lovable queer heroes and zany side characters aplenty. Childhood best friends turned lovers turned exes, aspiring sommelier Theo and pastry chef Kit reunite while cashing in the vouchers for the European food and wine tour they initially purchased while still together. Because they each waited until the last minute before the vouchers expired to use them, they must now spend the next several weeks in close company on the tour, taking in the sights, smells, and tastes of France, Spain, and Italy. It’s a fun and silly conceit with plenty of room for scenic travelogue and mounting sexual tension, marred only by the fact that Theo, who is nonbinary, is not identified as such until more than halfway through, meaning they are misgendered by other characters and readers alike until that point—a distraction from what is otherwise a near-utopian vision of queerness in which almost every character proves to be something other than heterosexual. Despite this quibble, it’s a mouthwatering feast. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary.

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Theo Flowerday and Kit Fairfield, childhood best friends-turned-lovers, broke up right before they were supposed to embark on a three-week food and wine tour of France, Spain, and Italy. Four years later, the two separately decide to finally take the tour before the vouchers expire. They've each changed. Theo is an aspiring sommelier with a converted VW cocktail bus; Kit is a pastry chef in Paris. But old feelings die hard, so to prove that they are absolutely over each other, Theo suggests a friendly competition: see who can seduce the most people as they travel from city to city. McQuiston's latest (after the YA novel I Kissed Shara Wheeler, 2022) is a hedonistic delight, with gorgeous descriptions of the scent and mouthfeel of the food and wine the group consumes, the scenery of Bordeaux, Monaco, and Florence, among other destinations, and very sexy love scenes. As always, the characters here are all fully realized, from the two Australian Callums on the trip to a sexy fishmonger in Spain to, of course, Theo and Kit, who are appealingly frustrating and brainy and completely in denial about their feelings. Sensual and unabashedly queer, The Pairing cements McQuiston's place as our premier chronicler of millennial romance.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: McQuiston's star has been rising since their debut, Red, White & Royal Blue (2019), and we are predicting lots of late-summer interest in this pitch-perfect romance.

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