I’ve decided that I want to do a series of briefer reviews, especially in cases like with these books where their impact on me was similar and they’re in the same genre and I only have brief things to say about each.

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

Two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they’re over each other—except they’re definitely not.

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other’s lives once and for all.

Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It’s in the past.

All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It’s not until they board the tour bus that they discover they’ve both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they’re trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It’s fine. There’s nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can’t have.

I’ve listened to both of McQuiston’s other adult romances, Red, White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop and while those weren’t favorites for me, I found them both to be enjoyably cute romances with interesting plots to propel them forward. I think that was where The Pairing fell flat for me, it had a very thin plot that was basically just “we’re touring Europe and we’re exes and we’re horny.” Which, to be fair, could have been great if I had been head over heels for the characters, but I just wasn’t.

When I was finally starting to come around on Theo and their POV, it switched to Kit’s POV for the rest of the book. I found that really jarring and annoying, I think it would have been much more successful if we had alternating chapters from their POVs or just stuck with one. With splitting them halfway through the book, I think it just made it feel like two separate stories. And being stuck in Theo’s head all of the time was annoying because they never seemed to take anything seriously, then it was annoying being stuck in Kit’s head when he was so dramatic, so alternating chapters seems like it would have struck a better balance. I did like their chemistry and banter when they were together, and McQuiston can definitely write a good metaphor for how love or attraction feels, but this is my least favorite of their books so far. Not bad, but not for me.

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.

I haven’t read anything from Rainbow Rowell in years, but I’d previously really enjoyed both some of her YA and adult romances before, so this was one of my more anticipated releases, especially because I usually love both second chance romances and friends-to-lovers stories. Unfortunately, I just didn’t really connect with anything else about this story other than the brief moments where Shiloh and Cary were together. Separately, I found their characters pretty boring, but the banter and history they had when they were together was what kept me reading. I also was surprised by how little plot this book had. We had a few flashbacks, some moments of the everyday adult life of a single mom, some emails between Shiloh and Cary…but not much was driving the story forward. The writing also felt weak unfortunately, at least from what I remember of Rowell’s other works. It repeated a lot of mantras and ideas that it didn’t really need to.

Again, not necessarily bad, but definitely not for me. The romance was interesting enough, but I didn’t have any emotional connection to the characters unfortunately.