Pairs by David William Richards

Curled up on my beach chair I spent days enjoying this fun book. Although not my typical style of book I enjoyed Richard's refreshing sense of humor. I could relate to the girls and know the guys!
The plot and characters seem to be highlighted in the earlier reviews. My review is simply that it was good book with wonderful characters, and I would strongly recommend reading it.

I just finished this book this very minute. I loved it and had to add my two cents worth about it right now! Others have given the plot synopsis, so all I can say is this book is such a hilarious, sexy, thought-provoking, sweet diversion....it was heavenly! With bated breath, I am most impatiently awaiting the next one!

"Pairs" follows the lives of four main characters as they live, form relationships, grow and face their personal demons. The book focuses on these four individuals in a realistic approach, stating "In grown-up fairytales, even the happiest endings have complications."

Meet the Characters:

Kayley is a single mother of one. Her daughter Terra is a psychically gifted child, a trait passed on by Kayley's mother. Kayley makes enough money to live off her job as a greeting card writer, but money is always tight and Kayley hates to be "charity". Love is something she dreams of but not something that seems a reality until she meets...

Adam is a carpenter, a sexy, good looking carpenter who is doing a favor for a friend by working on Kayley's basement pro-bono. When he meets Kayley and Terra his life is changed, his cousin's life is also about to change...

Henry, a math teacher, is a woman in a man's body, emotionally. Henry has nineteenth century values, intelligence and the emotions of a woman. Unsure if he is gay or heterosexual he explores only to find the truth and meet his perfect match...

Alexandra is a runaway with a past. As a former stripper who's bettering her life, she has quite a few skeletons in her closet. Her issues run deep and cannot be ignored. Through Henry, Adam and Kayley, Alexandra is finally able overcome her past in hopes for a better future with happiness, love and family.

Pairs gives the reader a myriad of topics to explore including, spiritualism, home renovation, herbal references, physics, and psychic aptitude. It explores love in all its fire and fury bringing friendship to the forefront of every relationship.

My Review:

When I finished Pairs, I was left with a form of writers block by way of review. My first and only thought was "humph". Pairs is a melting pot of relationships. The four main characters are connected and intertwined in many ways with deep emotion and undercurrents that keep them close together. While aspects of these relationships were very realistic in nature, other aspects were quite odd and unsettling. Oddly enough, I connected to Adam the most in this novel. Adam and Kayley's story intrigued me. I easily read through their tale but struggled to read about Henry and Alexandra. Eventually the novel becomes one melting pot of the four characters and their relationships formed, that it was no longer the story of two and two because each character has a relationship of some form with the others.

The novel was fairly easy to read, though much of the content did not agree with me. I do not prefer to read gay/lesbian romance and was unaware of its content in this book by the synopsis provided. I did enjoy the "real" life aspects of this book which brought froth real issues that are found in many relationships. The novel was not a fairy tale; each character had a past they were dealing with, a present to survive and enjoy and a future of hopes and dreams. It was refreshing in ways.

Overall, the novel was average. I enjoyed parts and didn't enjoy others. Personally I wouldn't be able to read this book again. It didn't' leave me with a clear point. It was what it is and I am still not sure exactly what that is. This is one of those books you just have to read if you find the synopsis interesting. If you prefer not to read bi-sexual material I would not suggest this book. Based on my feelings on this book I cannot recommend it as your next great read. I had a hard time understanding the review quotes given on the cover. I didn't find the book necessarily cheerful, fully captivating or a book I couldn't' put down. I do however agree with the comment "grab a glass of wine". This is simply a book you will have to decide for yourself on. For me, I'm still partially left with "humph".

Reviewed for blog tour

This book is about two (predominantly straight) couples. The men are cousins with little in common save blood; the women are from very disparate backgrounds. They are all (except maybe Adam, who seems to have his life together already but is conveniently unattached) relatively nice people who have had setbacks in their pasts. They are ready to pick up and move on to better things. Both couples meet cute, take ages to have sex, then go at it with enthusiasm. There is a lot of humor here, especially the character Kayley's grandmother, whom we never meet, but whose deftly sprinkled stream-of-consciousness phone calls are expertly crafted, and reminded me of the razor-sharp prologues to both parts of Angels in America.
The ongoing story is quite entertaining. Occasionally one realizes that the author is trying to run a subplot underneath all the conversations, flirting, sex, personal growth, and confessions. This arises awkwardly; Chapter 16 concludes "A cathartic sorrow overwhelmed Kayley, and she wept quietly." The very next chapter ends with "A cathartic sorrow overwhelmed Alexandra, and she wept softly." Am I missing something? I mean, I get the part about renovating the house.
There is something else about Kayley's departed ex-boyfriend and a poem they wrote together, but it gets so little emphasis that its infrequent mentions, and a recovered letter from the deceased, read at the end of the book, are somewhat anticlimactic.
Mr. Richards' prose can be awfully good: "A weak grin slid onto Kayley's face and led into a quiet pop of breath that Adam interpreted to be a distant and shattered cousin of laughter." Some same-sex attractions, mostly fleeting, flow easily with the narrative. Inexplicably, besides the slightly-more-than-tolerable number of typos are some other quirks. One character owns a "Berber umbrella." I have searched Google, thinking that there may be more drizzle in North Africa than I have been led to believe. All I could come up with was "...unless one is prepared to disagree with the whole concept of closely related Afrasan 'languages' brought under the 'Berber' umbrella ..." Does he mean Barbour? Burberry?
The author pays the bills by being an accountant but I would have guessed he is an architect. I counted the word "foyer" ten times in the text. If I weren't so cheap I could have bought the Kindle version and found a few more with the search function. I checked the poem that is so infrequently mentioned yet so fraught with a meaning that escapes me: no "foyer." Is it a metaphor for the birth canal? A critique of urban Canadian residential architecture? Wait; do Berber dwellings have foyers? A friend suggested that perhaps Richards is very fond of the author Jonathan Safran Foer and betrays this unconsciously in his writing; it's a reasonable theory.
Quibbles aside, I enjoyed the story and recommend it to those who are looking for well-rounded characters and overall good writing.