Since I was such a fan of Red, White & Royal Blue, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on Casey McQuiston’s latest novel, The Pairing.
Promising more queer storytelling, I was in. Too bad these characters ended up being pretentiously annoying. It took me almost half the book to figure out Theo, our first storyteller. Initially I thought Theo was a gay man, then a woman, but no one addressed Theo with any pronouns until about halfway through. A girl. A tomboy. And then later, gender fluid. Which is totally fine, but with no real clue about Theo’s identity, I had the hardest time picturing that character and in my opinion, that’s bad writing. Don’t you want your characters to be vividly visualized? The same can be said about Kit, though he was a little more straightforwardly described from Theo’s perspective.
I really gave this thing my solid attention for 250 of its over 400 pages, but then I just couldn’t do it anymore. I flitted through the remaining pages only to be equally as annoyed with its ending as I was its beginning and middle. Before this story takes place we’re brought briefly up to date on Theo and Kit’s past. They were best friends since they were young, then they hardcore dated before breaking up in London. Then they didn’t speak to each other for four years. Now in their late twenties, they both feel that they have their shit together and plan to redeem their unused travel vouchers from that time at the exact same time. Please.
Obviously there will still be lingering feelings there. It doesn’t matter how nasty the breakup was, when you’ve known someone for longer than you haven’t, and intimately at that, it’s hard to just shut everything off. And from what I can tell, these two might have their work life “shit” together, but they are still emotionally juvenile. Even once I learned the details behind the breakup it was all I could do to stifle a shriek of frustration. Still, they decide to be friends on this trip, and then, because why not I guess, they take a bet on how many people they can hook up with on this European food tour.
So that means the whole book is listening to bougie descriptions of food and audacious descriptions of their respective sexual encounters. And then listen to them be obscenely jealous about it. Look, I’m no stranger to smut, but the fact that these characters weren’t sympathetic at all was just another huge turn-off for the book in my eyes. I couldn’t wait to find the ending bits and be done with this thing. According to my friend, a lot of her other novels (never knew she had any others) are just as difficult to get through, so I think my future with McQuiston stops at Red, White & Royal Blue. For their sake.