Eat, drink, and make love

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston is a romance with a strong American flavour.

- Alpana Chowdhury

Theo comes from a successful Hollywood family, the Flowerdays, but wants to prove it on her own. Tomboyish (though this term might sound dated for a book of this kind), freckled, with strong limbs, she has tried her hand at various things including converting an old bus into a bar. A wine connoisseur, she can tell where a particular wine comes from, with details of the soil and weather of the vineyards. She grew up in an eight-bedroom house with a swimming pool and a wine cellar. While most girls her age had their noses in academic books Theo spent hours studying cocktail manuals and threw wild parties on her birthdays. In her twenties, she does event managements on weekends, executing lavish weddings and other gigs. And still she is broke most of the time because she is disorganized and terrible at handling finances. Nonetheless, she stubbornly refuses to use the Flowerday privileges. Her sister tells her bluntly, "You get in your own way. You have this nepotism chip on your shoulder, and you make your life harder on purpose just to prove to yourself that you're not what you are. But you're a Flowerday."