Monday, May 24, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Review: Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 1, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Instructions for Dancing is a Young Adult Romance/Rom-Com* novel by bestselling author Nicola Yoon.  Yoon is an author I'd peripherally been aware of but never tried, and to be honest when this book turned up on NetGalley under the YA category, I requested it more on a whim than anything - I'd been on a run of good SF/F romance novels, saw this listed and figured it kind of counted (and featured a non white couple at its heart), so why not.  

*There is a fantastical element to this book in that the protagonist begins to have visions after meeting a strange figure early on, visions that show her the past and future.  So I guess this could sort of count as modern fantasy, but for the most part this is a YA Romance Story.*

And Instructions for Dancing is just tremendous, sort of half coming of age story, half rom-com, dealing with a high school age girl whose family heartbreak has caused her to stop believing in the idea of love.  The protagonist, Evie, caught her divorcing father cheating on her mother, shattering her ideas of a happily ever after, and soon begins to have magical visions of couples getting together and then seemingly always breaking up in inevitable heartbreak, reinforcing her idea that love isn't worth it.  But of course fate brings her and a guy together and.....well, the result is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time in the end and will absolutely make you tear up as Evie realizes that love can be worth it for the moments in between, even if it may not last forever. 

---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
Evie believed in love - in romance - once, with her shelves filled with so many romance novels that she would open whenever she needed a pickmeup.  She could go on and on about her favorite tropes in these stories, and how she loved them all (well most of them).  

And then her dad, her loving father who made so many memories, told her that he was divorcing her mom - and when Evie went to ask him to come back, she found him with another woman.  

Now Evie knows that all love ends in heartbreak, and the devastation she feels inside makes it clear it's not worth it.  And when she goes to giveaway the last of her romance novels to a library, she's given in return a book called "Instructions for Dancing" and a strange horrible new ability - the ability to see the past, present, and future of a couple whenever she sees them kiss...an ability that only further confirms to her that it will always end in heartbreak.  

But following the book leads her to a dance studio, where Evie gets roped into training for an amateur dance competition...along with a boy named X.  X is dazzling handsome and charming and unlike Evie, he's reacted to past loss by deciding that he will always say yes and make the most of every given moment.  And against her better interest, Evie begins falling for him...but how can she commit to a relationship when she knows it will only end in more pain?  
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Instructions for Dancing is a YA story that will naturally hit home for a large number of kids in America (and will hit hard even for those it doesn't).  Evie's life has been upended by her parent's divorce (and her discovery her dad was cheating on her mom even before their separation) and it's made even harder by the fact that her mom and younger sister (who doesn't know about the cheating) don't seem to be hit as hard as she has been, with all of Evie's fond memories tainted.  Evie's one solid pillar of support is her small friend group - Martin, Sophie and Cassidy - which she cannot even fathom losing at this point as the rest of her whole world has fallen apart, leaving her cynical and jaded.  

The fantastical visions only make things worse, with her seeing seemingly that every couple she sees kiss may start in love and may have great times in the middle, but will always end up in heartbreak - even people she knows and would've thought otherwise about.  But Evie cannot get away from the good memories of her dad in the past and everything else, which only makes it all harder.  

So when Evie meets X, who charms her in all the ways she knows from her old favorite romance novels, it's a challenge to her very soul, as is when the visions start to show her things about her friends that make her absolutely dread the future itself.  But X's philosophy is to live in the moment, to not worry about the future or what might happen negatively, because then you'll miss out on the good there is, and it dramatically contrasts with her own jaded perspective.  And again X is so charming, so charismatic, so....hot that she finds it hard to resist that view...even as life begins to challenge both her old view and X's new one, as even X's view isn't so simple when you might see the future.  

I'm going to stop there because I don't want to spoil anything - suffice to say this is a book about understanding that the pain in the future or present doesn't diminish the love and happiness of the past, and how it's worth making attempts to try for whatever joy you can make.  It's a book that acknowledges that things will change, and that people may need to make second starts and that while it may be painful it's absolutely worth it....even if that requires forgiving some really heartbreaking things.  Love is worth every moment, even if it may not, even if it cannot last, and that's the lesson of this book, which Evie's journey takes us through in tremendous fashion up till an ending that is simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming - I reread it again just to write this review and teared up for a second time as a result.  

I suspect this won't be fantastical enough to have a shot at either the Hugo or Nebula YA awards (the Lodestar or Norton Awards) but this is a book that almost certainly will be on my ballot next year.  So good.  

 

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