I received an Advance Readers’ Copy of this book. All opinions are my own. Pub Date: 30 July 2024
Slow Dance isn’t my usual sort of fare but when an Advance Copy came through the door and I was headed out of town on a weekend away, I thought it would be a fun and easy read. It was exactly that – just right for dipping in and out of and not taking up a lot of head space.
Shiloh is in her early 30s, a single mom who has moved herself and her two young children back in with her own mother after her divorce. Shiloh lives a quiet, simple life and has resigned herself to a life of small pleasures (like eating a really good pear). She thinks life has mostly passed her by, particularly in the form of her high school best friend, Cary. Shiloh and Cary were inseparable through high school but they lost touch not long after when Cary joined the navy and Shiloh never left Omaha.
Shiloh doesn’t have much of a social life but she does venture out to attend her old friend Mikey’s wedding. At this wedding, she and Cary are reunited and all the old passion, friendship, and complications show up once more.
The story progresses largely as you might expect and it has the cozy rhythm that you pick up a book like this for. Probably what most makes Slow Dance stand out for the regular romantic fare is the age of the protagonists. Shiloh isn’t the young ingenue – she’s a divorced mom who carries the usual kind of baggage that a 30-something single parent might. She’s dealing with her own mom while Cary has plenty of family drama of his own. As characters, they both feel like they’ve existed in the world for an adult length of time. The surrounding characters feel largely realistic and decently fleshed-out too.
When thinking about what didn’t work for me in Slow Dance, I’d have to say it was primarily the physical descriptions of the characters. There are a lot of descriptions of their looks and bodies and Shiloh in particular is a character who interacts very physically with others. Yet I could never put all these pieces together and picture them in my head. If anything, all the smaller descriptions created these weird Frankenstein’s monster-esque images of people. I appreciated that Rowell took the time to emphasize that these were normal humans with normal human flaws but it didn’t quite work for me on a visual level.
All told though, this is a summer read and those looking for a fun book to take to the beach or camping or on a plane won’t be disappointed.
Karissa Reads Books 
Sounds like the perfect summer read! I know what you mean about never being able to fully picture some characters. It feels like the more I read, the less important it is to me to never be able to fully picture these characters, it’s always dependent on how the writer is writing and describing them I suppose.
On a side note, let me know if you have received emails with my new blog notifications, I’m having trouble with my regular commenters being able to comment and see my blogs now that I’ve transferred to another host…
It was a great weekend read! I don’t usually care that much what characters look like but Rowell actually focuses quite a bit on their appearances. So there was the discrepancy of getting a lot of descriptors and yet being unable to put those words together and picture it in a way that made sense in my head.
Yes, I think I’m getting all the email notifications! I’m behind on catching up on blogs!
I didn’t realize Cary was a love interest at first in your review because Rowell has written some lesbian fiction, though the characters could be best friends. Then, I realized he is a (straight) male love interest! You’d like Abbi Waxman.
That’s true – and is also a point in the book a little, that some of Shiloh’s friends don’t know if Cary is a man or a woman when she mentions her friend. Have you reviewed Abbi Waxman’s books? I feel like I’ve heard good things somewhere.
I have! You can go to my site and in the search box type The Bookish Life Of Nina Hill and also The Garden of Small Beginnings.
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