Spoiler-Free Review

If you’re looking for a character-driven contemporary love story that feels real and honest, try Slow Dance.

What’s Slow Dance about?

Shiloh and Cary were best friends…until they weren’t. Now they’ve grown up, Shiloh has kids, Cary is in the navy, and they’ve decided to give themselves another chance.

It’s a sweet story without being too cozy.

This story is neither a sweeping romance nor an emotionally tense drama – it’s a story about life; a story about two regular humans doing their best to deal with the fact that reality is far from a romcom. It’s the realism and relatability that I appreciated about this story.

The narration was honest, sometimes confrontingly so. Things weren’t sugarcoated or glossed over. If characters thought a certain way, or didn’t like something, the book told us so. I liked that. It felt real. And it made me realize how…polite a lot of contemporary romances are.

Something this story definitely gets credit for: having hard conversations and apologizing for things. There are love stories out there that have frustrated me in the past because nobody ever apologizes – but not this one. While there may have been some miscommunication in these characters’ pasts when they were young and silly, they’re now full adults with full adult capacity to talk it out. And it works. They might get frustrated or angry or annoyed in the process, but they stick it out until the conversation has been had – you know, the adult thing to do.

Plus, Shiloh is a mom, and I thought those elements with her children added both levity and seriousness to the story. From the regular child silliness to the toddler meltdowns to the trickiness of divorced family life, their presence in the story added a layer of nuance to the romance. It forced them to go slow, to think about what they wanted. I enjoyed these complexities.

The pacing of the second half slowed down a bit, and as the story went on the flashbacks seemed less and less relevant. But the book is overall light on plot, and is really about these two characters and their lives. Slow Dance is an apt title, because that’s basically what this book felt like – a slow dance between two old friends who grew apart and are coming together again.

Should you read Slow Dance?

If you prefer more plot, you may not be into this one. But if you’re in the mood for something slower, thoughtful, and character-driven, you’ll probably enjoy Slow Dance. There are no high stakes, and yet I wouldn’t call it cozy either. It’s just realistic.