I was excited to read this one - I remember liking Rowell when I was younger.

Overall, this was cute - the couple was cute, I was individually rooting for the characters and invested in both of them. It was fun and quick, and for the most part, lighthearted - which is all I want in a romance.

However, I tend to go into books (and movies, for that matter) blind. The slight drawback for me was that the military storyline, which isn’t my personal preference - though, again, something that I would’ve known had I read the blurb and not just gotten excited about a new Rowell. I did appreciate that the story did acknowledge that there is nuance in matters like those.

The book was fun and a great distraction, and I can’t really ask for much else.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

DNF. It pains me, truly, because I have loved everything I’ve read by Rainbow Rowell. This just wasn’t it. The main characters were insufferable, especially Shiloh. I could not stand her. The whole lack of communication was frustrating. There wasn’t anything in the plot or characters that made me want to keep reading.

I really liked this story and these characters. Their friendship felt so familiar and then after years them being able to rekindle it made a great story. I was really worried as I got closer to the end of this book that there was going to be a sad conclusion and that was going to be heartbreaking. However, the author wraps this story up nicely and I loved the happy ending.

This was a super quick read for me that left me feeling nostalgic and happy. I highly recommend this book!

m not sure why but I didn’t really connect with any of these characters. I enjoyed some aspects of this one like the conversations abound Shiloh’s feelings about sex and just attraction in general but I feel like everything just fell flat for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for this arc.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for early access to Slow Dance.

I've loved many of Rainbow Rowell's books through the years (Eleanor and Park, Fangirl, and Attachments) so I was really excited when she announced she was working on an adult romance novel. In Slow Dance, we meet Cary and Shiloh, best friends who high school who never become more until a fight in college keeps them away from each other for 14 years. They reconnect at another high school's friend's wedding and try to see if they can make it more this time by finally confessing their feelings for each other. I enjoyed the present and before alternating timelines of this book and the characters were developed in their sometimes annoying personalities. I felt that the pacing of this book was off though and it was too long. There was a part in the middle where I was totally hooked and didn't want to stop reading but it took me a while to care about the characters and the ending wasn't my favorite either. I will still recommend this book as the writing is strong and there are some sweet moments but this wasn't a typical romance to me.

I am straight up not a romance girlie, but I loved this. These characters are flawed and there’s a ton of miscommunication/lack of communication and just life that gets in the way.

I also really appreciated the jumping back and forth in time as you got the full picture of the relationships and the depth they contain.

Shiloh, Cary and Mikey have been a trio of besties for years. Everyone at their high school thinks Shiloh and Cary are a couple but they’ve never dated as both are too afraid of ruining what they do have.

Then, in a blink, 14 years passes with no communication between Cary and Shiloh until they finally meet again at Mikey’s wedding reception. And they meet like a match to a firecracker.

But they’ve both lived through a lot and misunderstood a lot and are still facing a lot.

Spoiler, there’s a happy ending. But the knowledge of the years of yearning make it so sweet.

A new Rainbow Rowell book is a banner occasion - I should have waited, I should have taken more time to savor this one, because I know it will be a while until I have another book from Rainbow. But I'm not perfect, and so I gulped this down in 24 hours, neglecting some things I needed to do in favor of spending time in Omaha with Shiloh and Cary, two of Rainbow's most perfect imperfect characters.

3.5, rounded to 4

Shiloh and Cary were best friends in high school and only friends, despite what many others assumed about their relationship. After high school, Cary joined the Navy and Shiloh want to college. Cary visited Shiloh once while she was a freshman and although they admitted their feelings for each other and slept together, their relationship floundered after that and eventually collapsed. They haven’t truly spoken to each other in 14 years when they are reunited at the second wedding for their other close friend from high school, Mikey, a successful artist.

Shiloh is thirty-three, divorced with two small children and back living with her mother in house she grew up in. Cary has advanced in the Navy, with postings in various states and countries. He has five more years in the Navy until he can retire. His mother, whose health is deteriorating, still lives in the house he grew up in. Despite the fact that he has older sisters who live close by, Cary supports his mother financially, including covering her mortgage, and tries to manage any other problems she has from afar.

Even after 14 years, Shiloh and Cary are both deeply attracted to one another, and #SlowDance is the story of how they reconnect—at first as friends and then as romantic partners—and the numerous bumps they encounter along the way, including a variety of communication and family troubles.

Rowell is a good writer, who has created interesting, complex characters, dealing with very challenging family situations. The novel is structured with frequent jumps back and forth in time—sometimes by many years, some times by a few months or days. This was very distracting and made it difficult to retain details of the story, especially since it covered more so many years. Rather than being able to get lost in a smooth narrative flow, the overall novel felt disjointed and episodic.

Structural matters aside, this is an entertaining, very slow burn, second chance, friends-to-lovers romance.

Thanks to #NetGalley and @WmMorrowBooks for the ARC.

Thank you, NetGalley for the eARC of this book! I went through a big Rainbow Rowell binge about 6 years ago when I first started reading a lot more and I jumped at the chance to read her latest adult novel.

“Slow Dance” is a simple story about my best friends who were really in love and just didn’t know how to communicate that and work it out as teenagers. I loved her real the story was. There was nothing grand about it, it was just the story of two people reconnecting and learning to make it work because they are in love. Shiloh and Cary are both strong headed characters who make frustrating decisions, but ultimately I loved them for how much they cared.

I finished this book in 24 hours. I enjoyed the back and forth between timelines in our characters lives. It was a little confusing at first because it wasn’t labeled for each chapter, but I appreciated getting glimpses of their past and getting both the female and male main characters’ perspectives. Even though I read this clicking the pacing was off, some chapters were repetitive and others too short. Either way I couldn’t stop till I found out how it ended.

This was bittersweet, beautiful, and authentic. I’ve never read a romance novel with this type of writing, so I had moments of confusion, but there were many times where I had to pause to absorb what was written, in a good way.

This is about two best friends that fall in love before they even know it. It’s goes back in forth between before and now, before being grade school years, to now in their adult years. This felt painfully real and I kept thinking that this reminded me of Normal People by Sally Rooney, but less hurtful lol.

This was my first novel by Rainbow Rowell and I’m so glad I was given the chance to read it. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC! Read this to feel alllll the emotions, especially if you love the friends to lovers trope.

I'm bummed. I've loved Rainbow's other books, but not this one.

I'm not even sure what the story was about. The characters all had their individual issues, some much more than others. Most of the time they didn't communicate well, which led to moodiness and misunderstandings.

I just feel like nothing was really accomplished in the book. Yes, there was a marriage at the end (spoiler alert) but it wasn't joyous. It just was.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

**I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.**

This was a cute slow-burn, second chance romance about two best friends, Shiloh and Cary, who grew up together and now realize they've had feelings all along. Nothing stood out about this story to me. It was pretty run-of-the-mill. It bothered me when they first had sex and she kept repeating "I love you" over and over again, but then proceeded to ghost him immediately after. Way to lead a guy on after being his best friend for years. And a really awful thing to do to someone who's stationed out at sea, alone and without anyone to talk to.

When they finally had sex again later in the book, I thought the entire foreplay scene was so weird. First he kneels down to pull her dress over her head. Why would you kneel down to do that? Then he says, "Shiloh's legs were too good. He wanted to f*ck them." What???? That is not a thing I have ever heard before. Shiloh later says, "I want to light you on fire....Literally." Who says that??!!! That is NOT romantic. Then she starts biting him, poking him, and pinching him, which is also weird because it's out of left field. They start to make it sound like she has some difficulties with sex but never explained it earlier in the story so it seems random. Her bisexuality also seems random.

The story is also set in the early 2000s but there doesn't seem to be any real reason for it.

Cute story but won't be recommending it to others.

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell is just such a lovely book. I hadn't read a Rainbow Rowell book in several years, but it was so nice to see her return to adult fiction, here with a quiet, regular life love story following Shiloh and Cary, childhood best friends who find their way back to each other in their 30s. It's a gentle story with big feelings and real life situations: a single, divorced mom, a son dealing with his mother's health, and so on. Nothing crazy or huge happens here; Rowell just traces their relationship from reuniting after 14 years and the ordinary parts of their lives as teens and adults.

It took me a little while to get into it, perhaps getting used to the way the book jumps back and forth in time while in the middle of the important beginning section, but I soon got sucked into it. The book is a bit overlong at 400 pages and started to lag a little for me at points, but overall this was very solid and I really enjoyed the time with Shiloh and Cary, even when I wanted to shake them a little and tell them to have a real conversation.

I think this book is very special. Shiloh and Cary go on a very long journey to get their happy ending and it's full of longing and pining and adoration and some heartache. There were times this book had me happily tearful and others where I was anxiously tearful and times where it was both at the same time. I think these people are realistic and raw and the definition of soulmates, no doubt about it. I loved everything about this and I was sucked into their story from the very first second. They are messy and I love them very very much.

Absolutely riveting. Rainbow Rowell's latest adult romance novel is one I won't soon be forgetting. In fact, I liked it so much, I read it twice just so I could relive it again. Rowell's writing and story is magical.

I have been a fan of Rainbow Rowell since I picked up Fangirl. Her stories just hit me right where I need them to. I love that her characters have flaws and those flaws make her characters real.

This book was the adult book I needed in my life. The feelings were raw. The relationships felt like ones I knew growing up and ones I experienced. I felt so many emotions with Shiloh and Cary while they were exploring their friendship as adults knowing everything they were to each other in high school.

I feel so much after reading this book that I’ll probably have to reevaluate my thoughts later on and wish I had better words to express what this meant.

I was very excited to receive this ARC and it did not disappoint.

This is a very sweet romance! The author did such an amazing job bringing these characters to life, and I could really feel the emotions as the backstory was revealed. This is not a thrill-a-minute type of book; rather, it is an intimate look at two people who grew up together, went their separate ways, then reconnected as adults. I really liked it!

As a Rainbow Rowell super fan, I was so excited to get an advance copy of Slow Dance. Slow Dance has all of the signature Rainbow charm: quick-witted dialogue, beautiful turns of phrase, full frontal hand holding, and scenes that feel achingly realistic. I loved every minute of this book, and I can't wait to read it again to pick up little things that I missed. I know that reading Shiloh and Cary's story will be just as great the second (and third, and fourth) time.

No one writes pining like Rainbow Rowell. The slow burn in Slow Dance was made even more excruciating (the good kind) by the alternating chapters set in the past, reminding all of us that Shiloh and Cary have been SO CLOSE to getting it together so many times. For anyone who has ever found love and lost it, or who can't stop thinking about the love they almost had. Slow Dance is a beautiful ache of a book, and I couldn't put it down.

Romance — 4.5⭐️

Ugh, I loved this book so, so much. It’s about two kids who fall in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. They go their separate ways, and 14 years later—and a lot of life in between—they find themselves back into each other’s world.

Slow Dance is the perfect title. A a slow burn, second chance romance as Cary and Shiloh find their back to each other. The emotional pull gripped me from the beginning and never let up.

Cary and Shiloh are flawed, and at times frustrating but never to the point where I wasn’t fully rooting for them. Instead, it was so authentic and deeply human.

Told in dual timelines, present and flashbacks of young Cary & Shiloh as friends, their journey wrecked me. There’s heart & heartbreak, wit, miscommunication & words not said. Yet, so realistic and genuine. A complicated contemporary romance between two broken, beautiful people.

With that being said, this is my type of book but I’m not sure it will be everyone. I think if you enjoyed Talking At Night, you’d enjoy this one too! This is my first Rainbow Rowell book and I immediately added Eleanor and Park to my tbr because, wow.

Friends to lovers, poignant, flawed but realistic characters.

This was beautiful although frustrating at times. Cary and Shiloh are high school non-sweethearts who can never seem to be on the same page at the same time. They’re best friends with a third person named Mikey and Shiloh always feels on the outs, assumingely because shes a girl. After they graduate and move away to college and the Navy, their entire relationship changes into, well, nothing. Shiloh gets married and divorced, has two kids, and lives back home with her mom in Omaha. Cary is the best man to a mutual friends wedding and they finally see one another after 14 years. Their communication could’ve been better and it was a bit longer than it really needed to be but overall such a wonderful story with characters that I cared about.