Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Instructions for Dancing

Instructions for Dancing is a coming of age story. It’s about learning to see that not everything is black and white. That the beginning and ending of a story aren’t the most important part, it’s the middle.

It’s about forgiveness and learning to love someone despite their flaws. It’s learning to enjoy and cherish the time you have with each other, however long that may be.

Nicola Yoon has done it again. 5 stars from me.

Content Warnings

notesbykamzzie's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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12dejamoo's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I feel mean giving this 2 stars but it was just kind of okay. It had a lot of great elements but also I think it tried to do too much. There were lots of threads, none of which received enough attention or development.

Kind of spoilery discussion:

We've got the main set up of Evie's dad cheating on her mum and her feeling jaded about love, which I think is plenty enough set up of our main character's problems with love, but then we add the superpower. This is probably what draws people in - it's a fun detail and ties into her feelings about love, but I think it isn't developed enough. It obviously puts her off at first, and makes things weird with her friends, but it doesn't <i>really</i> stop her from pursuing love at all. Like okay at the end there it does, but when that moment happens it feels really like it's coming out of nowhere because we haven't really spent that much time developing her power and how it affects her and how her relationship with X is potentially not perfect.

Also, the woman at the start with the Little Free Library and the book with the directions. Like?? It's all just a little bit random. I know it's one of those 'mysterious woman is the reason for weirdness' thing but the woman could also just not be in there and the whole book would have been absolutely fine. It's not a fantasy so we don't really <i>need</i> an explanation as to how she developed this power.

And then there's the dancing bit! Which is so thrown in. I can't believe the book is called Instructions for Dancing and then it hardly even talks about the dancing at all. We spend a lot of time stressing about going to the wedding and then not going and then yes going, and so much time on bonfires and waffles, that we never spend any time with them learning to dance. I wasn't paying 1000% attention to the timings but I don't think it was feasible to go from zero dance skills to winning amateur titles. For instance, there is the chapter where Fifi says they have two weeks to go and then she starts teaching them the Argentine Tango from scratch?? I'm sorry but even for an amateur competition you need more than two weeks of practice. I guess my main point is that if there was no dancing in this book it would have been the exact same book.

Evie's character development was all over the place. She would learn and grow and then change her mind and backtrack. It was really frustrating.

Good points include: I liked a lot of the scenes, I just thought they were often underdeveloped. I liked the format with text conversations and prose and lists thrown in. It was fun. I will say that a lot of the chapters were too short (but that goes back to underdeveloping). I liked a lot of the ideas and I liked some of the characters. Fifi was great and the idea of Martin was fun. I liked Evie and her family. X kind of annoyed me a lot of the time, but other times he was fun.

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linzozil's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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kiingchika's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The quote at the beginning of the book, “Almost nobody gets out of love alive”, slapped me so silly when I finished the book because they just love with their entire being. I firstly love dance, and this book made me want to explore dance so much more. It was a lovely book, honestly the best high school romance I’ve read in the sense that they just feel so real. It has its own cliches honestly for the sake of the story. I definitely can’t wait to read and cry about this again, I genuinely enjoy when I can tell how much the characters feel

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aishallnot's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5 (maybe 4.25)

This was a book on my tbr that I finally got to after two years. I was a fan of Nicola Yoon back in high school when she released her debut novel (that later turned into a film), so when I was getting back into reading a couple of years ago and found out about instructions for dancing, I was immediately excited to one day read the story. I think if I read this back then, my feelings would be a lot different compared to now in which I would have given the book five stars without questions. However, I found the story to be okay for the most part. I picked up this book back in June, but I softly dnf'ed bc I wasn't really in the mood (which might have impacted my rating). About a week and a half ago, I started reading it again and I enjoyed the story a lot more than I did when I first read it. I def related to Evie at times when it came to her outlook on love. I think this is a story that is unique with the magical realism twist liked how this story basically is a "happy for now", which I feel like we don't see in many romance novels. What was also really touching was how Evie started to slowly accept change not only with relationships but also friendships as well now that she and her friends have graduated high school and are off to different. I feel like this story was a lesson/reminder to accept that things may not go as planned or in regards to relationships may not be a fairytale. There are challenges along the way, but it's how we respond/react that makes an impact. I did wish that the ending was a bit longer bc I really like Evie and X, but I found the book to be cute with its overall message.

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