Sometimes I think the only way to keep something forever is to lose it and let it haunt you.
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing“Those men are terminally straight.”
“Nobody’s straight on a European vacation.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing
CBR16 Bingo: Golden
This book contains golden everything. From the food (golden honey, golden grains, golden baked bread, golden pastries, golden saffron), to the characters (sun-kissed and golden, golden hair, golden skin), and emotions (golden memories, golden opportunities, and people more precious than gold), just dip this book in the pure, golden sunshine of the Mediterranean sea and call it a day.
Theo is in Europe for the first time. Actually, it’s their second time, but the first time didn’t count because they landed in London Heathrow and immediately flew back to Palm Springs. That was four years ago. That was the last time Theo spoke to (fought with) their ex-boyfriend, Kit.
The reason for the initial trip was to take a three-week culinary tour through France, Spain, and Italy. As the trip credit expires this month, Theo decides to take the trip and finally lay to rest all of the animosity and hurt leftover from the relationship.
Funnily enough, Kit has the same idea and they end up on the same trip. Neither one of them wants to give up entirely, so they decide to handle it maturely “as friends.” This goes as well as expected.
Theo is still extremely, reluctantly, attracted to Kit. Instead of being able to take their sexual frustration out on him, they propose a contest to see who can sleep with the most people across the ten-or-so cities on the tour. Instead of being stress-relieving, it is stress inducing as each of them gets jealous during the other’s conquests.
The most annoying things to me are the standard tropes of miscommunication and extreme stubbornness. Also, this book is long: four-hundred-and-seventeen pages long. I started skimming the food descriptions somewhere around the seventy percent mark just because I needed these two idiots to figure out what they were doing.
The best thing is that there is no huge, third-act drama. There is plenty of drama, but there is also plenty of time to spread it out in the aforementioned four hundred pages. This is the slowest of slow burns, but I like the way in which they finally got their happily-ever-after.
For this year’s CBR16 Book Bingo Reading Challenge I’m choosing albums from the 1970s that helped raise me. When I think of golden, is there anything more iconic than ABBA GOLD? Specifically, the song “Voulez-Vouz,” from the 1979 album of the same name.
