Pairs - Book Review

A few weeks ago I was sent the book Pairs by D.W. Richards to review.   As you know, I am an avid reader and enjoy all different book genres.  The only hint of what the book was about initially was that it was “women’s fiction.”  Wow - that covers, well, everything.

So a few weeks after that I was then told the book had “homosexual themes.”  Hmmm… okay.  I’m pretty open to anything and I don’t have a problem with the “theme” so bring it on.

The book tells the story of two couples, interestingly enough they are actually couples of the man/woman variety.  The web that is woven is between these four people and their network of family and friends.  The best parts of the book are the developing relationships between each couple.  Richards certainly knows how to build up a relationship from the beginning.  I actually was rooting for these couples to get together.  The book starts out slowly with an examination of all the players (characters) but then it gets a little muddled in the middle.

The homosexual and bi-sexual tendencies start out as background to getting to know the characters but then quickly becomes so played on that you can’t really get past thinking the book is geared more towards gays and lesbian readers than it is towards heterosexual readers.  There are a lot of sexual situations that seemed gratuitous rather than pure storyline.   If you like that kind of stuff… this is right up your alley.

The pace of the book went back and forth, sometimes jumping quickly from one scene to another, and other times getting into so much detail you start to wonder where this is going.  There are so many different themes in the book that it would have been simpler to just focus on one or two.

Would this be a book I would recommend to my book club?  Probably not, but if you are interested in learning about alternative lifestyles this would definitely fit the bill.