Slow Dance

A sweet, weird romance with fun characters and some spice

Audiobook was so good. I didn't realise it was the same narrator for both characters till the end.
The story was nice. The character names were horrendous! I enjoyed this a lot till I stopped listening due to no fault of the book itself.

Slow Dance menceritakan kisah dua sahabat masa kecil, Shiloh dan Cary, yang kembali bertemu setelah bertahun-tahun terpisah. Mereka adalah sahabat sewaktu SMA. Mereka berencana keluar dari Omaha, Shiloh akan kuliah dan menjadi aktris, sedang Cary akan masuk Akademi Angkatan Laut. Mereka berjanji akan bersahabat selamanya.

Kini Shiloh berusia 33 tahun, pernah menikah dan kini bercerai dengan 2 anak. Shiloh kembali tinggal di rumah masa kecilnya di Omaha.

Shiloh dan Cary adalah karakter-karakter yang relatable untukku. Kisah ini membawaku kembali ke masa muda dan mengenang kembali persahabatan yang pernah kumiliki.

Perpaduan trope friends-to-lovers dan kesempatan kedua yang berkembang perlahan-lahan ini sangat menyentuh hati.

Karakteristik Rainbow Rowell yaitu menciptakan dialog yang natural dan humor. Gaya penulisannya yang ringan membuat novel ini mudah dinikmati.

Belum 5 bintang karena di beberapa dialog Shiloh dan Cary lebih seperti remaja daripada orang dewasa yg bertemu kembali. Selain itu hampir 400 halaman agak terlalu panjang untuk romance menurutku. Aku tetap merekomendasikan novel ini untuk penyuka romance ringan.

This is the first book I read by Rainbow Rowell that I didn't love. Forgettable.

THIS BOOK IS SO NORMAL PEOPLE CODED I COULD SCREAM oh my god rainbow rowell can do no wrong

This to me is the experience that I love in books. I enjoyed it. When I had to stop reading, I think about them, and what's going to happen next. Cary is me in some ways, like, I just want everything to stop and start anew. Shiloh on the other hand is me and my OCD. We just had to go on and move and live because there's no other way.

I knew even when I started, even when I read the blurb that this is not going to be Eleanor & Park's adult arc. But whatever, I see it that way and all I want in my life right now is the peace and the comfort that in the end, everything will work out.

Both of these characters were broody and stuck in high school. I did not like them at all. The dialogue was cringey. There were lots of snippets from the past or side plots about other people in each of their current lives that felt pointless. Just didn't like anything.

The MCs are in their mid thirties, so this could have been a good story about growth and finding the right person after so many years.. but all they were doing was going backwards and holding on to past feelings. So yuck. I gagged almost out loud so many times.

This entire story felt like the author going down memory lane for her own sake of telling some secret she needed to get out. I've read other Rowell books, and I think she's mostly a decent author, but this one was just really not good.

Shiloh was so full of hard corners it was almost uncomfortable and in the end I was honestly afraid of what could happen; but alas, it was just a real love story for adults who have lives and are not good at communicating. Not ashamed to say I have cried a bit.

My high expectations of Slow Dance, Rainbow Rowell's first adult novel in ten years, were mostly met despite (or because of?) a meandering plot and somewhat confusing non-chronological flashback chapters. Shiloh is a divorced mom of two young kids who lives with her own mother. Cary joined the Navy immediately after high school and is currently stationed for months at a time on a warship. Set in Rowell's native Omaha, the first third of the book deals with these formerly inseparable besties meeting for the first time in 14 years and finally addressing the missed opportunities and miscommunications that kept them apart after one ill-fated college visit. At peace with the past, they reluctantly part......Only to be reunited when Cary's mom (who is really his grandma) suffers a fall, and Cary calls Shiloh to ask for help. For a while the novel focuses on dysfunctional family dynamics that have roots in alcoholism, abuse, and neglect. Immediate crisis averted, we then shift to a largely epistolary section in which Shiloh and Cary grow even closer while he is at sea, and then a rousing finale in which a unique HEA is nailed down. Oh and somewhere along the way Shiloh realizes she might be bisexual. Neither Shiloh nor Cary are standard romance novel characters, and I give Rowell props for creating two flawed, struggling people who nevertheless fit together. I'm not a huge fan of kids clogging up my love stories, but Junie and Gus are realistically moody and annoying, demonstrating to Cary that his relationship with Shiloh will never be completely smooth sailing. Rowell's writing style, which includes multiple parenthetical clauses (my English teachers told me to never do this)(also to never split infinitives, which I just did) can be an acquired taste, but it's a quirk I can tolerate. I'm glad Rowell returned to the adult novel world, after spending ten years writing YA fantasy and comic books. I squee'd over her first few novels back in the day, but in hindsight there were some problematic aspects that #OwnVoices and #MeToo brought to light (including questionable Asian representation in [b:Eleanor & Park 15745753 Eleanor & Park Rainbow Rowell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1341952742l/15745753.SX50.jpg 17225055] and blatant stalking in [b:Attachments 8909152 Attachments Rainbow Rowell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1499377988l/8909152.SY75.jpg 13785503]). There will be some potential Slow Dance readers who are turned off by Shiloh's disavowal of her previous anti-military stance as “adolescent naivete.” Nevertheless, I hope this book's reception is positive enough to convince Rowell to stay with this genre for a while.ARC received from Net Galley in exchange for objective review.