Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Hardcover, 304 pages
Release Date: June 1, 2021
Published by: Delacorte Press
Read from: June 1-26, 2021
Stand-alone 
Source: Bought
TW: Cheating (Not on page, but is mentioned several times) 
For fans of: Contemporary, Romance, Coming of Age, Magical Realism, YA

  #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun is Also a Star Nicola Yoon is back with her eagerly anticipated third novel. With all the heart and hope of her last two books, this is an utterly unique romance.
     Evie Thomas doesn’t believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually.
     As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything–including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he’s only just met.
     Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it’s that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love. In the end, is love worth the risk?

*MY THOUGHTS*

Every time another Nicola Yoon book comes out I say I’m not going to read it. She likes to play with my emotions a little too much. But then every time another one is mentioned, I go to Goodreads and add it to my TBR. She’s already broken my tear ducts, so I might as well go ahead and read them anyway. And that’s exactly why I went ahead and read this one.

“Almost nobody gets out of love alive. – Helen Fisher”“

Epigrapgh

After her parents get a divorce, Evie stops believing in love. If they can’t be happy, then who can? When she gets the gift to see an overview of couples and their romance, she can’t help but feel validated that love only brings heartbreak. Trying to figure out why she has this gift, she meets X at a place she least expected to be, a dance hall. As they’re complete opposites, she doesn’t expect to fall for him and all his idiosyncrasies, like saying yes to everything. But suddenly she finds herself in a dance competition with him and so much more. Can X help Evie to find herself again?

“I should know better than to banter. Why? Because in every romance book ever written, banter is a gateway drug. […] despite how it might seem, this is not a love story.”“

pg. 74

Since I addressed this already in the review, I was not expecting to cry with this book. But man, Yoon has a way of sneaking these things in there. And she definitely got me this time. I made it all the way through this book smiling thinking oh man, this is so good, the power is so cool, etc. I wasn’t even thinking of crying. And then BAM. Whyyyyyy? I mean I get why…. It created the conflict, but dude, warn someone lol I legit cried real tears. I don’t know the last time I did that. And every time I cry real tears or laugh out loud, or talk back to the book, I know I have invested a lot to it and I know that I really love it. And this one is a perfect example of that.

“Martin and “Me” Me: I think something’s up with them. Martin: Yeah, maybe. Me: I blame spring. Me: It’s like the pollen makes people extra kissey. Martin: You’re saying kissing is an allergic reaction? Me: For which there is no cure.”“

pg. 87

Speaking of being invested, the writing style of this is of course amazing. But I expected nothing less from Yoon. She is definitely a Queen of YA Romance and this one shows it. It was so unique. I’ve never read or even heard of anything like this before. I really want to know how she came up with this concept because I thought it was really cool. Definitely magical realism done in a way I don’t think anyone has seen before.

“People are always saying stuff like Take a Chance on love. Love is worth the risk. Etc. Buy the visions have taught me differently . […] Yes, falling in love requires a leap of faith, but people only jump because they don’t know what the ground looks like. They believe their landing will be soft. That the ground is covered in soft stuff.[…] But I’ve seen thr ground. It is covered in lethal spikes fashioned from the bones of other jumpers. The fall is not at all survivable.”“

pg. 133

The romance was super cute, but it was pretty basic. It was your average, “person meets love interest, they fall in love, they lose each other, and they find each other again” troupe, but again, the way Yoon tells it makes it so good. And it felt so real. Like it wasn’t cheesy or fake feeling and I enjoyed that. Evie complained and fought it the whole way, but she finally gave in once the events started bringing them closer together. [SPOILER] With the type of dancing they were doing, I thought it would have been weird if they didn’t try being together.

“Don’t you think it counts for something that they’re happy now?”“

pg. 141

The only thing that kinda bugged me was the contest. I wish she had showed more of it. It was this huge thing building up to it, but when it got there it wasn’t really shown at the end. I wanted more. Maybe show them saying it was really close? Or what the others were wearing? What the other school did when they announced the winners? I don’t know, just something. I just thought since it was such a huge part of the plot, it would have been more into it. But, this could also be because she was gearing up to break my heart again, but yeah, who really knows?

“The problem with broken hearts isn’t that they kill you. It’s that they don’t.”“

pg. 253

This book was so good I had to change my next read to something that had short stories because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get too invested in anything else. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a slump because of a book, but here we are. I’m not surprised that it took a book by Nicola Yoon to get me in one. As one of the Queens of one of my favorite genres, I am not surprised that I loved this as much as I did!

Overall, I give this

If you had Evie’s power, what would you do with it? Let me know in the comments!