400 pages
Published July 2024 by HarperCollins
Publisher's Summary:
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.
My Thoughts:
This week I'll be reviewing this book by Omaha author Rainbow Rowell and Omaha author Timothy Schaffert. As I looked back to see which was the first Rowell book that I'd read, I found that in April 2011, I also reviewed books by these same authors. That Rowell book was my first book by her, 2011's Attachments. In that book I found that her writing light and humorous, but also heartwarming and heartbreaking. I was so excited that she agreed to write a guest post for my then two-year-old blog.
Since then I've read 2014's Landline, 2013's Fangirl and, one of my all-time favorite books, 2012's Eleanor and Park. Since then, though, Rowell has written three books that were a spinoff of Fangirl that were not something that interested me and some manga, also outside of my reading comfort zone. I've missed her. I can't tell you how excited I was to find that she'd finally written something that harkened back to those books I so enjoyed a decade ago. And then worried that Rowell's style might have changed over the years, that this book couldn't live up to my memories of the other books.
What did I expect from this book (which, of course, I knew nothing about going in because I didn't look, I just automatically knew I'd want to read it)? Humor. A relationship between two characters who keep putting roadblocks into their paths to happiness. Complicated family relationships. At least one quirky character, most likely one that makes me think that they are modeled in no small part on Rowell herself. Great dialogue. Omaha. And I got all of that, every bit of it.
This is what Kirkus Reviews had to say about this book: "Both of them are smart, clever, misanthropic, and stubborn. They are also, along with the omniscient narrative voice and tertiary characters, very funny. Rowell does longing like nobody’s business. She pits epic love against relatable, painful foibles. Cary and Shiloh want each other palpably, but they get hung up on little details, feel shame, project, overthink. They struggle mightily to believe they’re lovable."
In this book, Rowell blends her understanding of adult life and relationships (as she did so well in Landline) with her astonishing ability to recall the angst and pain and struggles of young people. In this book, readers are treated to both the current storyline of Shiloh and Cary as they try to reconnect and pick up where they left off and to glimpses into their pasts, into their friendship that would long ago have become something more than that had they had the ability and courage to express what they truly felt. In the end, it's probably just as well that they didn't. It wouldn't have lasted. They had to work their way to each other as adults. I'd worry that I've given away something here; but you know this book for what it is, a romance where you'll get the ending you're hoping for. Even if you can't imagine, for a goodly part of the book, how these two will ever be truly honest with each other, get over their fears, and find a way to make things work out, no matter how many obstacles are in their path.
Welcome back to adult fiction, Rainbow Rowell! I've missed you!
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