Breakaway Books

Authored by Casey McQuiston; Published August 2024; Romance

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

The Pairing is a hedonist’s dream. Eat your way through France, Spain, and Italy, while falling in love with an ex? Who could resist?

It tells the story of Kit and Theo, two childhood best friends who had a disastrous break up a few years before the story takes place. As they are both swept away on a three week long food tour that they had initially booked together, they disentangle how they each think they fell apart. While it was nearly impossible not to be enchanted by the setting, their love story is not my favorite.

I appreciate the treatment of Theo’s struggle with gender, but their stubbornness drove me nuts right from the start. Theo is so determined to prove themselves fully independent that they practically shove away anyone close enough to offer to help. They came off a little meaner than I could enjoy, especially in contrast to Kit, who is depicted as a supremely gentle soul.

But, there were threads of Theo’s story that I—and I’m sure most people—could relate to. A desire to find something they truly love to do and succeed at it, after a string of failures. An insecurity that manifests itself as thinking all of their friends and family are happier without them, which only makes it easier to push them away. For all their stubbornness, I did find them more relatable than Kit, who seemed to be an overly perfect angel at times.

Like many romances, the primary obstacles between them were miscommunication and pride. Their happy ending (which I won’t spoil) is among the most satisfying I’ve seen, but I will say that I wish it were real. And truly, the setting of this novel cannot be beat: repeated descriptions of big cities, small towns and quaint countryside in Spain, a France, and Italy, along with more delicious food than I could possibly stomach. It almost doesn’t matter how you feel about the romance, as long as you love food.

You may not be able to afford a three week tour to eat your way through Europe, but you can luxuriate in The Pairing.