The Pairing

LoveReading Says

PLEASE BE WARNED THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS! 

I am absolutely a Casey McQuiston stan. They are royalty at pulling off exactly the kind of snappy, high-concept, queer romcoms that are absolute crack to me. Their YA novel I Kissed Shara Wheeler (also reviewed for this website) is one of my favourite queer reads of all time – though it should be noted that The Pairing is very much for adults. I don’t know if I have ever read so much queer sex in one book, even when I read an anthology of erotica.

The book changes voice half-way through – the first in Theo’s voice, as we see the two exes surprisingly bump into each other on the European tour, and challenge each other to a hook-up competition – and it then splits into Kit’s point of view once they are navigating the boundaries of being ‘friends-with-benefits’ (in heavy quotation marks, as they’re not fooling anyone). Naturally, different readers will have their own preferences for voice, and mine was Theo’s for the gags – in the middle of a flirty moment, a joke about Ratatouille made me lol on the train. 

As a non-binary reader, it’s so meaningful to have a non-binary main character in a romcom, and for that to be handled with such delicacy and ease – unsurprising given Casey’s own identification, but it’s still hard to execute in a way that’s so celebratory and frictionless on the page, especially as a character coming out as non-binary and shifting pronouns happens so rarely in commercial fiction. 

I also, obviously, fancy both of the main characters very much. Thank you McQuiston. 

Reviewed by Billy Lindon
Lily Lindon (Billy) is a writer, editor, and bookseller living in London.
More reviews by Billy Lindon

About The Pairing

From #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston comes a deliciously sexy romantic comedy The Pairing.

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