4.3
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352 ratings
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Attachments comes Slow Dance—a novel of true love and friendship.
Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.
They were just friends.Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.
Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.
Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.
When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?
The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.
Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.
It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.
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ISBN-10
0063386461
ISBN-13
978-0063386464
Print length
608 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Harper Large Print
Publication date
July 29, 2024
Dimensions
6 x 1.37 x 9 inches
Item weight
2.31 pounds
ASIN :
B0CH8HRL2V
File size :
4769 KB
Text-to-speech :
Enabled
Screen reader :
Supported
Enhanced typesetting :
Enabled
X-Ray :
Not Enabled
Word wise :
Enabled
“Who can deny the absolute, dizzy pleasure of loving a novel so much that you cannot bear to put it down, that you want to do nothing but keep flipping pages, that you want to immerse yourself fully and not come up for air until you are finished. I read Slow Dance in just that way, breathless and weeping. There is no one better than Rainbow at creating flawed, deeply human people. I loved every page of Slow Dance, a book that is romantic to its core, and as funny and smart as its wonderful characters.” — Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author
“If you, like me, think thirty-somethings methodically working through their issues is very hot, Slow Dance is the book for you. The people in it feel like people you know or may even people you’ve been. Slow Dance is sexy, sweet, wise, and nostalgic – Jane Austen’s Persuasion for our times.” — Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times bestselling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“Deeply human, profoundly romantic. Rowell tackles the challenges of love lost and rediscovered with nuance and candor. She will break your heart and you’ll thank her for it.” — Leigh Bardugo, New York Times bestselling author
“[Shiloh and Cary’s] dance is sweet and sexy, and Rowell draws out the whole, simmering affair as she ping-pongs through her characters' past and present, step, together, step, together. . . Superstar Rowell's first adult novel since Landline (2014) is big news, and this romantic one is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.” — Booklist (starred review)
“A gorgeous book. Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell is a beautiful, believable love story between two slightly broken people. It was so sweet, but never sentimental. I yearned for them to be happy, and I miss it now it’s over.” — International bestselling author Marian Keyes?
“A will-they, won't-they second chance romance for the ages, this one is poised to be one of summer's breakout hits.” — People
“Rowell takes her time revealing the couple's origins as high-school besties, the conflicts they helped each other through as teens in working-class families and those they're dealing with now, the long period of silence between them, and the undeniable glimmers of their enduring mutual attraction. Their dance is sweet and sexy, and Rowell draws out the whole, simmering affair as she ping-pongs through her characters' past and present. . . . [Slow Dance is] sure to be a crowd-pleaser.” — Booklist (starred review)
"Rich, real, and emotionally raw, this satisfying contemporary is sure to impress." — Publishers Weekly
“Rowell pulls off this impossible premise with great charm, and her depictions of the couple’s sweet courtship and their later compromise-filled marriage are equally unsentimental and knowing.” — The New Yorker on Landline
“Rowell is talented enough to be uncategorizable. . . . Landline belongs to a genre of its very own.” — New York Times
"Her writing swings from profane to profound, but it’s always real and always raw.” — NPR on Eleanor & Park
“The funny, wised-up dialogue, the tumultuous, sweet, and sexy love story is grade-A Rowell . . . a book that readers will find almost impossible to put down.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Carry On
“Perfectly mixing sweet romance with deliciously tart wit, Rowell’s literary debut is a complete charmer.” — Chicago Tribune on Attachments
“Witty, insightful and uncompromising, Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance is an emotionally charged and beautifully real romance.” — BookPage
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One
January 2006
The wedding invitation came, and Shiloh said yes, of course she’d be there.
Mikey was one of her oldest friends, and she’d missed his first wedding. She couldn’t afford the trip to Rhode Island at the time. (She still couldn’t afford a trip to Rhode Island.)
But this time he was getting married here in Omaha, right down the street—of course Shiloh would be there. Everyone would.
Everyone loved Mikey. He held on to people. Shiloh had never been sure how he managed it.
She checked yes on the RSVP card and wrote in, With bells on!
The week before the wedding, she bought a new dress on clearance. Deep-burgundy floral with a low-cut neck. It was meant to be tea length, but it came to Shiloh’s knees. The sleeves were a little short, too—she’d just wear a denim jacket over it. (Could you wear a jean jacket to a wedding? A second wedding?) (It would be fine. She’d pin a silk flower to the chest.)
The wedding was on one of Ryan’s Fridays. Shiloh waited until he picked up the kids before she started getting ready. She didn’t want Ryan to see her wearing makeup. Or heels. She didn’t want him to see her trying.
Maybe some people wanted to look good for their exes, to show them what they’d lost or whatever. Shiloh would prefer that Ryan never thought of her at all. Let him think he was too good for her. Let him think that Shiloh had gone to seed.
Shiloh was a thirty-three-year-old divorced woman with two children under six—maybe she literally had gone to seed.
Ryan was late, even though she’d told him she had somewhere she needed to be. (She should never have told him she had somewhere to be.)
He was late, and the kids had gotten tired of waiting. They were hungry and sullen when he finally showed up and blustered his way into the living room like she’d invited him in.
“They’re hungry,” Shiloh said.
And Ryan said, “Why didn’t you feed them, Shy?”
And Shiloh said, “Because you were supposed to take them for dinner.”
And then he said—
It didn’t really matter what Ryan said after that. He was just going to keep saying the same old things for the next fifteen years of coparenting, and Shiloh was going to have to keep listening, because . . . Well, because she’d made a series of serious mistakes and miscalculations.
It was funny, almost, how poorly Shiloh had built her life—especially for someone who had once prided herself on her ability to make decisions.
That’s something she’d decided about herself when she was a teenager. She’d thought she was good at making decisions because she liked making them. They felt good, they gave her a zing. If someone was lingering over a decision or seesawing between two options, Shiloh loved cutting in and settling the matter. The world would spin faster and with more clarity if Shiloh were in charge.
If Shiloh could talk to her teenage self now, she’d point out that deciding wasn’t any good if you weren’t deciding correctly—or even in the neighborhood of correctly.
Ryan finally left with the kids. And Shiloh tore the clearance tags off her dress. She put on makeup. She pinned up her hair. She stood on tiptoe to get her boots zipped over her calves.
She’d already missed the wedding, but she wouldn’t miss the reception. No one would. Everyone would be there.
Two
The reception was in a rental hall on the second floor of a youth wrestling club. Mikey had married someone from the neighborhood this time, a girl who had been a year or two behind them in high school.
It was a plated dinner, with assigned tables. Fancy.
“Shiloh!” someone called out, as soon as she walked into the lobby. “We thought you weren’t coming!”
It was Becky. Shiloh and Becky had been on the high school newspaper together. They’d been thick as thieves—they’d actually stolen a traffic barricade once—and they still talked sometimes. They were friends on Facebook. (Shiloh almost never logged in to Facebook.)
“I’m here,” Shiloh said, mustering up a smile. There was going to be a lot of mustering tonight, she could already tell.
“You’re at our table,” Becky said. “It’s practically a journalism reunion. Everyone’s here. Oh god, wait—you were at our table, but we thought you weren’t coming, so we gave your seat to Aaron King, do you remember him? He was a sophomore?”
“I remember him—it’s fine.”
“But you should still come say hi. Everybody’s here.”
“No one can say no to Mikey,” Shiloh said.
“You’re so right,” Becky agreed. “Plus we all thought there’d be an open bar.” She laughed. “Oh well.”
Shiloh followed Becky into the reception hall. She held her head straight and kept her gaze fixed, deliberately not scanning the room for familiar faces. Anyone that Shiloh would recognize was going to have to force their way into her field of vision.
They got to their table. There was Becky’s husband and Tanya—god, Shiloh hadn’t seen Tanya for years. And Tanya’s husband, yeah, they’d met, hi, hi. Hugs. Hi. Nia. And Ronny. Shiloh hated Ronny. At least, she used to hate Ronny—did she still hate Ronny? She hugged him anyway. People, all these people. From the same tiny part of Shiloh’s life (it hadn’t felt tiny at the time). All these people who knew her and remembered her. They were all eating salads and sorry that they’d given away her seat—but that was okay, Shiloh didn’t mind. She’d pull up a chair later. It was good to see them, she said—and it really was. It was good to know now who was here, from the old days.
And who wasn’t.
It made sense that he wasn’t here—he was in Virginia, wasn’t he? The last time Shiloh had heard, he was in Virginia. Maybe someone would mention it later . . .
Of course he wasn’t here. He was in the Navy. He was probably on the ocean somewhere. Probably didn’t get back home much. She’d heard once that he didn’t get back home much . . .
He wasn’t here, and other people were, and she could enjoy this now. Enjoy them. Enjoy something.
Shiloh didn’t want to stand there hovering over her old friends while they finished their salads. She squeezed a few shoulders, then squeezed between tables to get to the one in the corner where Aaron King had been assigned to sit. (She actually didn’t remember him.) There was a couple sitting there, surrounded by empty chairs.
“Mind if I join you?” Shiloh asked.
They didn’t mind at all. They introduced themselves—Mikey’s aunt and uncle—and told her they’d already eaten her dinner roll.
“We ate all of them,” the uncle said. “We thought we had this table to ourselves!”
The aunt cackled warmly. “We were gonna eat your cake, too.”
“You still can,” Shiloh promised, sitting down. There was a white jar candle next to her plate, branded Mike & Janine, January 20, 2006.
Shiloh picked it up and sniffed it. Lavender.
She could look around now—now that she knew he wasn’t here. It was safe.
The tables were set up at one end of the reception hall, and there was a dance floor on the other. Spotlights were already flashing onto a disco ball in the corner. Shiloh had been to three or four weddings here before, but this was probably the best she’d ever seen this place look. Someone had wrapped all the fixtures in Christmas lights. The chairs were swathed in tulle.
Shiloh liked weddings. Improbably. Still. She liked seeing people’s best outfits. She liked beginnings. She liked the flowers and the favors and the little bags of Jordan almonds.
A lot of the other guests were people Shiloh vaguely remembered from high school . . . all of them looking a little older and fatter and knocked around by life to varying degrees.
It was easy to pick out Mikey’s New York City friends. Art-world people. There was a woman in a bright yellow bandage dress and a man wearing black culottes and platform boots.
Shiloh used to take great pains not to be dressed like anyone else in a room—but she’d lost her edge. And she’d never had as much edge as these people. She felt dowdy in comparison. Thrown together. Even though she hadn’t tried this hard in years.
She scanned the crowd for Mikey. She’d have to apologize to him for missing the ceremony. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. He surely had plenty of other things on his mind.
Someone near Shiloh started tapping a fork against a wineglass, then other people picked up the clanging, everyone eagerly turning to watch the bride and groom kiss. Shiloh followed the wave to the head table.
There was Mikey. With his curly blond hair and big, goofy smile. He was wearing a white suit. That was obviously Janine next to him in the wedding dress. Then the bridesmaids in pale green satin. And the groomsmen. And Cary.
Cary.
Shiloh clenched her hands in her lap.
Cary was a groomsman.
Right . . . Right—that made sense.
Of course Cary was here.
Of course he wouldn’t miss it.
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Rainbow Rowell
Rainbow Rowell writes all kinds of stuff.
Sometimes she writes about adults (ATTACHMENTS, LANDLINE). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (ELEANOR & PARK, FANGIRL). Sometimes — actually, a lot of the time — she writes about lovesick vampires and guys with dragon wings (THE SIMON SNOW TRILOGY).
Recently, she’s been writing short stories. Her first collection, SCATTERED SHOWERS, is out now. She also writes the monthly SHE-HULK comic for Marvel.
Rainbow lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
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Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5
352 global ratings
Kindle Customer
5
Slow dancing
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2024
Verified Purchase
One of the most bittersweet, Happy tears and binge worthy reads I've had in a long time. I will miss this story and think of it for days or a lifetime so endearing
Kelly Standen
5
good good
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2024
Verified Purchase
I really liked this story. Super cute characters and not completely predictable. Kept me entertained. It was a good read
Amazon Customer
5
so beautiful.
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2024
Verified Purchase
I loved this book so much. I don’t even have the words to say how much I enjoyed it. I wish there was a sequel.
4.2
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100,022
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4.3
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155,575
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154,085
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143,196
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80,003
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59,745
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107,613
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