Slow Dance

High school best friends reunite at a friend's wedding and try to figure out what they want to be for each other.

I describe this book to others as: what if you fell madly, disastrously in love before you had any relationship skills? And also you had financial obligations to dependent family members?

I would grab any book Rowell wrote without reading the summary because she is so consistently good. Her characters are lovingly described, they have problems but not unsolvable trauma, and they say yes to life when it's difficult: yes to complex family dynamics, yes to fun jobs, yes to intimacy. This book has maybe the best written sex scenes I've read in a published novel.

52% into this 12 hour audiobook. OMG! so far I've been so impressed by this doomed love affair between Shiloh and Cary. This is one of those relationships that is essential to each MC being able to say they "live", as opposed to "exist", and yet is unrequited, painful, equal parts disillusioning and sustaining - ultimately devastating. In other words, REAL.

Even as children, they knew their connection was extraordinary, and perhaps because they had that bond before sexuality kicked in, they found it so difficult to transition to lovers? Or was it due to their specific personalities, products of inherent and environmental forces, that did not do sex well? at least with the one that was the focus of their lives.

Shiloh, who uses words as show more guards, weapons, probes, pleas. Cary, who absorbs, longs for, endures, hopes - and does not use his words, at least not affectively, strategically, in a way that "tidies up" Shiloh's storm of words so that they can find happiness. It's tragedy.

I wonder what the second half will bring?

100% through this book. OMG! This book has 84 micro chapters - many chapters were 2, 4 or 6 minutes long, others 10 or 15 minutes. It was a good idea. It made you feel the book was moving forward, even if Cary and Shiloh moved infinitesimally.

Over and over my eyes got wet and my heart constricted. How do we get through life if it is this painful. With the lens this book provides on life, I understand suicide. I understand being a hermit. I understand hopelessness and being lost.

Many times it was hard to like Shiloh, yet I appreciate that she did the best she could...anxiety, a lack of options, so little personal freedom...and she had some weird habits. Cary is determined to join the navy from a young age, to make something of himself, to put order and stability in his life, safety and security. Yet he never does escape his "white trash" home and the grasping hands pulling at his "honour, courage, commitment" that the navy asks of him.

Among Shiloh's weird ways was the poking. I've not heard or this before so I had to look it up. AI says: "The phenomenon where someone displays actions like touching, poking, or biting, that seem aggressive but are actually a way of showing affection or interest, is called cute aggression. It's also known as playful aggression or gigil. This behaviour is often linked to feeling intensely positive emotions towards something, such as a baby or a beloved pet, and can involve squeezing, pinching, or even biting."

I didn't mind the voice of the narrator, Rebecca Lowman. While her deliberate style and unadorned delivery suited the material, I wish she had found a way to lighten her tone in the 2nd last chapter, the wedding, so that I could believe our MCs really were going to live happily ever after. Rowell told us that they were at last happy, but...for so much of the book I had trod such fragile ground, made such fragile progress with them....

Not all the tears were for our MCs. That scene where Cary talks to his comrade at sea, Travis - so unbearable that human beings are taken out of their families for 6 months, or more! All of us who've done long distance have an inkling of how inhuman this could be.

Many of the support cast in this novel, including the children, were not appealing - I would say that only Tom and Mikey bore enough positivity, energy, liveliness for me to like them.

The awful mess we make of our lives - the unfaithfulness, the dishonourableness, the ungenerousness - not to mention our emotional disabilities - this mess has such awful repercussions across families, across generations. In this regard, Cary and Shiloh, despite their various stunted capabilities when it came to reaching for fulfilment, love, happiness, do shine.

As I approached the end I was reminded often of The Shots You Take, Rachel Reid's new book. Also, there was something about the time period of 2006 - this didn't feel like a contemporary setting, not like The Shots You Take. It felt like a period novel, pre the smart phone.

Finally, I haven't crossed paths with the expression "realistic romance", or perhaps haven't read a book designated as in this sub-genre, before now, in this romance reading period that I'm in. I think that has a lot to do with why this novel blew me away so thoroughly. I believe I will put on my big-girl pants and read some more, even if I have to brace myself for it. show less

This is the most realistic romance I’ve read in a long time. Not at all what I was expecting with the romcom sounding premise, but it went emotionally deep quickly. Shiloh and Cary were best friends in high school & reconnect at a wedding, but the story is about so much more than that. It’s about the middle, caring for parents & kids and all the complications life throws your way. It breaks your heart and makes you giddy with hope, sometimes in the same scene. I will say Shiloh was a lot, but I love that she’s unapologetic about that.

Like Eleanor and Park, Rowell’s appealing young adult romance from 2013, Rowell again sets a love story in Omaha, Nebraska, with a female protagonist who is in some ways similar to Eleanor.

Shiloh is an adult - 33, divorced, with two kids under six years old, and living back home with her mom, but the story goes back and forth in time, to when Shiloh and her friends Cary and Mikey were all 16, in high school, and part of an inseparable trio. It also switches between Shiloh and Cary as narrators. It doesn’t alternate regularly, but rather, as the need arises, so sometimes it is by chapter, sometimes by paragraph.

It begins in the present time, with Shiloh attending the (second) wedding of Mikey. She is both hoping and dreading that show more Cary will be there. Cary was in the Navy (he had been in ROTC since seventh grade), so she wasn’t sure if he would be able to come, even if he *was* Mikey’s long-time best friend.

The last time Shiloh saw Cary, it was 14 years earlier. He had come to see her when she was in college. They were both 19 then. It went well and it didn’t. They gave in to their years-long attraction and spent two days together, mostly in bed - “the best two days of Cary’s life.” But he was afraid Shiloh wouldn’t want the life of a Navy wife, and Shiloh was afraid he wouldn’t want *her*. So Shiloh gave Cary an “out”; she later argued, “I was just being realistic.” But as Cary later told Shiloh, “You couldn’t wait to tell me it was nothing, Shiloh. Before we even had a chance.”

Shiloh was the type of person that pushed others away first, before they could push her. She thought Cary had “never taken his eyes off the prize [service in the Navy], as long as she’d known him. There was no future where she told him she loved him and he told her that he’d stay. There was no future where he followed her or turned back for her.”

Less than a year after Cary left from that visit, Mikey told Cary that Shiloh had a boyfriend, and then that she married him. But Shiloh’s marriage with Ryan, which produced two kids, Junie and Gus, only lasted until Gus was 2 months old, when Shiloh found out Ryan had been cheating on her the whole time, even before marriage.

Now she longed to see Cary again, but she also thought that if she had learned anything about herself, “it was that she couldn’t hold on to people.” And before she let her defenses down to let someone in, first she had to believe that someone actually wanted to love her.

“She’d thought, with Ryan, that she was lucky to have someone who didn’t need to look in her eyes. She’d realized too late that he couldn’t. With Cary, Shiloh wanted to push through her own discomfort. To get over herself. To look directly at the sun.”

For his part, Cary had to learn how to get through Shiloh’s insecurities and reassure her. Rowell drew Cary as patient, tender, nurturing, and respectful, which was just what the prickly Shiloh needed.

Everyone else, of course, always had thought Shiloh and Cary were meant for each other. But getting there was, as the title suggests, a long, slow dance.
Evaluation: Rowell is just outstanding at crafting believable characters (flawed, insecure, sincere, relatable) with dialogue that seems absolutely realistic. Her insight into relationships is excellent as well, as is her ability to limn life among the unprivileged without judgment or prejudice.

This lovely story will not disappoint Rowell’s fans or fans generally of a nuanced and realistic romance full of complications that real people experience but that rarely make it into stories taking an easier, more stereotypical path. show less

As teenagers, Shiloh and Cary were such close friends that other people assumed they were a couple. But when they reconnect at a high school friend’s wedding, it has been fourteen years since they had a proper conversation. Shiloh is now a divorced mother with two young kids, living again with her own mother in the not-so-nice neighbour of Omaha that she grew up in. Cary, who has built a successful career in the navy, is trying to support his elderly mother from afar.

Slow Dance alternates between 2006, as Shiloh and Cary work towards rebuilding -- “resuscitating” -- a relationship, and the early 90s, exploring their high school friendship and why it fell apart. I’ve found Rowell’s stories highly re-readable and this one is no show more exception -- I’ve already reread most of it twice. I enjoy her prose. It’s evocative and allows her to capture her characters as individuals, opinionated and emotional, and clearly shaped by their experiences.

And then seeing these characters build a relationship with someone who they can share all the messy, vulnerable parts of themselves with? That is very appealing.

I bookmarked so many quotes! Here is one of them:

Cary, back in her life again. A place in his life. Shiloh liked being an emergency contact. She just wanted contact. She wanted to pull those old warm feelings through the empty years and into the present. She wanted to repot them here and find them a nice sunny window.
Did Shiloh want to be the person Cary called when he was feeling low? Or even a person he could call?
One hundred percent yes. One thousand percent.
Especially if it meant she could call him, too.

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Oh, this story tugged so much at my heartstrings. After a close childhood friendship and some rocky college events, estranged friends Shiloh and Cary reconnect as adults at a close friend's wedding 14 years later. Shiloh is now a divorced mother of two young children, and Cary is a Naval officer who is posted on a ship for six months at a time 2000 miles away from where Shiloh still lives in their hometown. Over the course of this wonderful story, prickly Shiloh comes to understand that Cary is her person, something that quiet Cary has always known about Shiloh. And Cary comes to understand that Shiloh is worth fighting for and being honest with. I guess you'd call this a second chance romance, and honestly it has my favorite trope show more which is childhood friends-to-lovers. Also, I originally thought maybe grumpy/sunshine, but really it's grumpy/grumpy (which I also love). They seemed opposites attract at first: Shiloh was a little too much when she was younger, in that way that energetic and intelligent girls are who don't fit with their surroundings but can't leave; and Cary was her calmer counter-part. But as we watch them get older they seemed more like two sides of the same coin, wounded by their families and life and looking for acceptance and love and friendship while dealing with their own demons. When you know people through the stages of your life, it can be tricky for both of you to be at the same emotional place at the same time. Throughout the course of the book, we see this to be true for both Cary and Shiloh, although they realize this at different times. I liked that their reactions to each other were realistic, and I liked that they didn't have all the answers but still saw the value in trying.

I really enjoyed this poignant and at times bittersweet story, and I loved watching the journey they went on. Hopefully it's not a spoiler to say they finally got their HEA, thank goodness. Just a warning that the POV kept changing, which was a little confusing at times but I'm very glad we got to see both perspectives. I liked the use of flashbacks to fill out pieces in their backstory and to further inform why Shiloh and Cary were drawn together as children and then back together as adults. I have read this author in the past and enjoyed her immensely (I highly recommend "Attachments"), and this newest book did not disappoint. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book, this is my honest and objective review. show less

Best friends since before high school everyone thought it would be Shiloh and Cary forever. Except, neither Shiloh nor Cary knew how to bridge that gap in their relationship. What happens is many missed opportunities.

Now, they're reunited at a friend's wedding for the first time in nearly fifteen years. They have both lived full lives in the intervening years. Can they pick up what they put down so long ago, or has too much time passed between them?

I love Rainbow Rowell's simplistic approach to writing about life and love. I say simple when in reality it's anything but simple. I should more appropriately say she truly captures the nuances and complications of everyday life in the most relatable way.

I absolutely adored Cary and Shiloh show more and I was so pulled into their story. The book is laid out in that we get chapters in the present and chapters in the past. I liked that there's such a dichotomy between Shiloh and Cary past and present that I didn't need the "before" sub-headers to indicate when we were getting a glimpse of them in the past. I think this perfectly highlights how different they are, how much they've grown, as individuals in the intervening years, but also the subtle ways in which they've remained the same.

I will say that I had the most difficult time reconciling the past Shiloh from the present Shiloh. I just think this is because she's had a much more substantial change with everything she's gone through. Instead of becoming the actress she wanted to be Shiloh was married, now divorced, and is mother to two young children and back, again, living with her mother in the house she grew up in, and teaching children's theater. Shiloh doesn't want to be living with her mother, and I think she wishes some things had turned out differently with her life, but she cannot see a way to change any of that.

On the other side is Cary who, after graduation, joined the Navy and has been enlisted ever since only coming back to Omaha occasionally to look after his mother. I think it shows a sense of steadfastness. He had one trajectory for his life and he has stuck with it for the long haul. The only thing, or someone, who could have moved him from his course would be Shiloh.

They've each carefully circled around one another, not wanting to rock the boat, not wanting to risk losing their friendship. The will they/won't they is pretty spot on as is their undeniable connection to one another.

I really liked how all the other characters surrounding Shiloh and Carey are rooting for them, it's just Shiloh and Carey themselves that are the biggest obstacles.

I'm happy that Rainbow Rowell decided to return to an adult title this time around after having spent the last few years in the YA and YA Fantasy realm. I was first introduced to her writing through her first book Attachments and these types of books of hers have always held a special place for me. I can now honestly say that Slow Dance fits perfectly in there as well. show less