Instructions for Dancing – A Review by Bryony – Blog Tour

“It doesn’t matter that love ends. It just matters that there’s love.”

Rating: 4 stars

Release date: 3rd June

Publisher: Penguin

Author: Nicola Yoon

Evie is disillusioned about love ever since her dad left her mum for another woman – she’s even throwing out her beloved romance novel collection.

When she’s given a copy of a book called Instructions for Dancing, and follows a note inside to a dilapidated dance studio, she discovers she has a strange and unwelcome gift. When a couple kisses in front of her, she can see their whole relationship play out – from the moment they first catch each other’s eye to the last bitter moments of their break-up.

For Evie, it confirms everything she thinks she knows about love – that it doesn’t last.

But at the dance studio she meets X – tall, dreadlocked, fascinating – and they start to learn to dance, together. Can X help break the spell that Evie is under? Can he change Evie’s mind about love?

TW: Divorce/Grief/Cheating/Death of a close loved one

Rep: Black main and side characters. F/F side romance

I couldn’t resist requesting this when I saw it come up on The Write Reads set of upcoming tours. I adore books about dancing, especially romances, because that forced proximity between characters just lends itself to intimacy, especially when the characters don’t want it to happen (read: enemies to lovers). God, it’s good.

Instructions for Dancing is not an enemies-to-lovers dancing romance at all, but it is between a romance-cynic and a do-whatever-life-throws-at-you character. It made for a really interesting dynamic because each played off each other and gave the other another way of looking at the world. I loved Evie and X’s relationship – their friendship and their romance. The friendship felt just as important as the romance in this, which I really liked; it didn’t feel halfhearted and I liked how X slotted into Evie’s life with her friends and her family. The romance felt really genuine and I was 100% invested in it.

By the end, my heart ached. (It feels weird to discuss the end of the book at the start of a review, but this is apparently where this review has taken me.) This book should come with tissues and chocolate to cope with the end. But, to make this point make sense, it’s because the author so effectively wrote a relationship I rooted for that the end hit me so hard. I could empathise with exactly what the main character was feeling, given it’s a fear I often have.

I really enjoyed Evie as the main character. I think she was funny and relatable and loved the people around her with so much force that it justified a lot of her choices, even though it made her frustratingly stubborn at times. Is it weird that I liked how she enjoyed books in this? Some contemporaries where the main character likes books, I kind of find cringy but Evie made me laugh in this with her analysis of her ex-favourite romance books, applying each cliché to her own life.

Each of the side characters felt fleshed out, too, meaning that Evie’s relationships with her parents and her friends were as interesting as her romantic relationship – and just as important. There’s the flamboyant dance teacher, the loved-up grandparents, the romantic sister, the nerdy best friend and the lesbian side romance that wasn’t just for show. The love interest is every romance book cliché rolled into one, but the book plays off that and made it fun.

Evie’s magical power/sudden ability was really the only thing that wasn’t fleshed out – just appearing one day and becoming a bit of a nuisance the next – but I didn’t find it bothered me. Maybe I read so many fantasy romances that a girl seeing a bit into the future really wasn’t the weirdest thing I’ve read.

But honestly, I loved this book. Despite hurting me, I also really enjoyed it. It made me laugh, I fell in love with the characters, and I’ll be recommending it a lot. Oh, and I bought it literally the minute I finished it.