CBR Bingo: Map, because this entire book is frameworked by the map journey that Sadie takes along the Camino de Santiago.
hot take: I like the concept (although I did like The Pairing better in the questioning queers questing genre) but found myself annoyed with the extreme insistence that there’s some mandatory experiences needed to be queer. Because even if Mal constantly emphasizes that they’re not necessary, it still implies that without some combination of alt hair/tattoo/Birkenstocks/grunge hair you’re doing it wrong…and a book meant to make Sadie feel better about being a lesbian shouldn’t make a card carrying bisexual feel worse about herself, you know?
longer take: It’s probably unfair to compare The Pairing to this book. TP is more of Queer 401 or 501, like, advanced level graduate course. TP has out queers, who know their minds, have some loosely alluded-to backstory, and are ready for some bisexual chaos gremlin-ing as they journey through Europe. They’re also both culinary people who are taking a culinary trip, so there’s alignment between the journey and their motivations.
None of this is true for Every Step She Takes, which is definitely Queer 101 /102 aka Sadie is still in the closet (gay) and Mal is also in the closet (secret wealth) and what they need to do (contemplative self-reflection and incremental changes implemented over time) is orthogonal to their journey (walking miles and miles/kilometers and kilometers a day in the heat). So by design this book does feel like a LOT crammed into what is really only ten-ish (fifteen?) days. It also suffers from one valid critique, I think–the sort of gotta catch ’em all approach to representation which gives us fat queer trans Muslim characters) (love ya Ro)–and one not-at-all valid critique, which is that every time I thought about this book or picked it up that damn song got stuck in my head.
PLOT: Sadie is a home-bound antiques dealer who has severe eldest daughter syndrome. She’s never successfully dated…<i>A MAN</i> and spends all her time running a shop she inherited from her grandmother who stepped in to raise her and her sister when her mother collapsed following her father’s abandonment of the family. Her younger sister has EXTREME younger sibling syndrome, and is a out bisexual travel influencer who needs Sadie to go on a Camino de Santiago trek in her place as her knee is le fucked.
Without training. With new gear. Without any media/influencer training.
On the other hand, we have Mal (long name escaping me). She’s the not-so-secret super wealthy heir to the second largest fortune in Portugal after her father died a week ago, leaving her CEO of the family wine business. She’s spent the entirety of her adult life–20 years, since she turned 18 and her father asked her to just be like, less gay plz–wandering around, do-good-ing for a bit until she loses interest and/or has a breakup and then impulse books a ticket to a trip thanks to her trust fund. She’s going to hike the Camino and just think about her choices, not fall immediately in love with the first pretty girl she sees.
Neither of these women are going to do what they should for this trip, and instead fall tumultuously into a travel romance that is mildly broken up by reminders that they are sweaty, smelly trekkers staying in non-air conditioned inns and dealing with falling off toes. Lust love and blindness etc etc.
I’ll forgive some of my annoyances with this book because they’re sort of irrelevant and honestly a bit snobby (it’s so basic to have orgasmic joy over pasteis de nata! the whole of Portuguese cuisine and desserts in front of you and you go with the one (1) thing that you can find pretty much everywhere). My real issue is the tired message that there’s some specific way(s) to be queer that Sadie missed out on by being non-sexually active in her adolescence. She never got bangs/a tattoo/acted on a crush/snuck out of bed/etc etc etc? Well, like, neither did a lot of people of all sorts of sexualities, and it doesn’t make their adolescence any more or less valid than those who did. And yes, maybe I’m taking this a bit personally because I am one of those people, but it so happens that I grew up around them as well. If you believe the research, Gen Z are even less likely to have done all these things, and reiterating that you can only be A Real Gay if you have These Experiences isn’t helpful.
