Review of The Unlikely Pair by Jax Calder
The Unlikely Pair by Jax Calder. View Book on Goodreads | My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved The Unlikely Pair. So I am starting this review with a resounding recommendation to read this book as soon as you can. It swept me along and I found myself surprised at how much I had invested in the characters, who at first were difficult for me to understand.
In the end, I shed tears and rooted for the MCs to get together and loved this book so much, it was such a great read. I now have to go back and read book one of this series, and wait impatiently for book three, which won’t come out until 2025! That seems like forever away!
Potential Spoilers, you are warned!
This review may contain some spoilers because there are things I want to talk about! You can read the Unlikely Pair soon, it releases on August 7, so not much longer to wait! However, if you don’t want to be spoiled you might just want to take my strong recommendation to read it and revisit this review once you’ve read it for yourself!
British Politics
Upon starting this book I was worried that it was going to be heavy handed on the explanations of British politics in it, which I know next to nothing about. I didn’t want to be bludgeoned with information dumps to get us ignorant Yanks up to speed. Thankfully, that’s not how Calder approached the necessary explanations into British Political arena. I learned so much about how things work without feeling drowned by all the the details.
In the end, I came out of this albeit fictional book with a much clearer understanding of how the British House of Commons operates. I found that the way Calder approached this in the book highlights how the she can lead the reader along the way to a destination they weren’t quite sure of at the onset without it being super obvious they’re being led.
Toby and Harry: The Unlikely Pair
I was afraid I wasn’t going to believe in Toby and Harry’s romance because the title of the book is spot on. They are the definition of an unlikely pair. Would people that different politically be able to even be friends, let alone romantically involved? The only clue that their chemistry was off the charts is that maybe they enjoy their bantering across the room in the House of Commons a little too much.
However unlikely, their development from political adversaries starkly opposed to one another, to begrudging acceptance that they are in this situation together, to literally helping one another survive to heated lovers was realistic. I believed in their journey. They maintained their political bantering the whole novel through which I definitely think would persist in a relationship where vastly differing political views are at play. They might have started as The Unlikely Pair, but by the end I was wanting to yell at them that they simply cannot be without one another!
British Politics Seem Tamer
I appreciated the insight into how British politics don’t seem quite as vitriolic as American politics so that Harry and Toby’s sort of union could actually be realistic. By contrast, in America if someone were anywhere right on the spectrum, especially as right wing as it’s gotten here, there’s no way someone liberal could palate having a relationship with them.
Being insulted and called names and accused of being too woke and ruining the fabric of a nation does not inspire romance. The fact that they could maintain decorum and have a debate without devolving into screaming at one another was refreshing. This might be more a commentary about how bleak the political arena is in the US though. Even though I keep circling back to politics, this book maintains a nice balance throughout that doesn’t make it fall too heavily on the politics side. It’s a romance, through and through.
The Romance
And speaking of the romance, the romance is sweet, innocent in many ways. Harry, having seemingly denied himself the freedom to explore this side of himself for so long, seems ardent and shy and in awe of the feelings he’s experiencing. And Toby is there for it! The way they work together and struggle to stay safe in the wilds with unknown assailants hunting them really makes the reader invested in both their survival and their budding romance.
Toby and Harry remark at one point that out in the wilderness all the façades of life are stripped away. Life becomes much simpler than the complexities of politics when things get down to the brass tacks of survival. They have to work together. And if they don’t, one or both of them might not survive. It makes it that much easier to fall into deep emotions with one another. It’s not about Harry, conservative leader and Toby, liberal MP. It’s about them as people getting each other through their ordeal alive and in tact.
Once the feelings are there, the spice is hot. It’s all encompassing love even if the couple themselves want to deny what it is for a long while.
The spicier side of me wishes there were more intimate scenes where it didn’t fade to black as it were. Because as Harry and Toby often said, they seemed to communicate best while having sex so I wanted to see more of that.
The Mystery
The great mystery of what is going on with the scary black helicoptered, machine gun toting bad guys is not solved in The Unlikely Pair. A large part of me wishes the reader got more insight into what was happening, if I’m being honest. I imagine the mystery will be resolved in the next book. It will be gratifying to finally see how the mystery will eventually resolve and to know what is happening in the larger picture. A multi-book story arc appeals to me, but part of me really wanted to get more of an idea about who dun it in this book.
The threat was so menacing when Harry and Toby were out in the wilderness. Evil seemed to always be right out of sight, and I feared for their lives a few times. Harry and Toby were incredibly vulnerable out there, the men hunting them so inhumane, so callous. The momentum building was great and then it seemed to just disappear from the plot of the story.
The mystery reappeared briefly once they were rescued. There was a bit more development into the masterminds behind the plot going on then. But the overall mystery was not focused on in the back end of the novel, in which political jockeying and pining romance took a front seat.
Length
At the beginning I was afraid that The Unlikely Pair was going to drag and be really long to read because it has quite a number of chapters. But I read it quickly because I got invested in the characters and sped through the bulk of the novel without realizing it.
Series is worth a read
I haven’t read the previous book in the series The Unlikely Heir, but I do know that those characters show up in this installment a lot, Oliver former Prime Minister and Prince Callum. I will definitely be reading that book as well. The next book will not come out until next year 2025 so please be patient (I am mostly talking to myself here) because it will be worth the wait!
Overall The Unlikely Pair is a great read, and I highly recommend it!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
View all my reviews on Goodreads. Read more of my MM Romance Book Reviews here on my blog.
