Casey McQuiston—the bestselling author of Red, White and Royal Blue and One Last Stop—returns with the wildly anticipated romantic comedy The Pairing, in which two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour—but they’re totally over each other, right?
Costumes, literary and otherwise, strongly encouraged at this special Halloween event!
All tickets, with the exception of a limited number of Pay What You Can tickets, include a copy of The Pairing.
Q&A with Charlie Hunts of Charlie’s Queer Books.
In Casey McQuiston’s latest romantic comedy, The Pairing, two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to an international hookup competition to prove they’re over each other. And they are over each other, right? 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.
Casey McQuiston (they/them) is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies, including One Last Stop, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, and Red, White & Royal Blue, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Bon Appetit. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, Casey now lives in New York City with a poodle mix named Pepper.
Charlie Hunts’ (he/him) career began at book publishers in San Francisco before going on to craft brands in the sports, government, and finance industries. Now in the face of a record number of book bans and anti-LGBTQ legislation, he returned to the book world to open Charlie’s Queer Books, Seattle’s first queer bookstore in nearly 20 years.
