Instructions for Dancing Book Review

Title: Instructions for Dancing
Author: Nicola Yoon
Type: Fiction
Published: 2021
Pages: 281
TW: Infidelity, Death
From the love from her family, sister, friends, and even people she doesn’t like, but whom chose to care for her, it gives the reader pause to realise that we don’t often chose who we love, and we may lose those we love, but we should appreciate the love we have, wherever it comes from, even if it is only for the briefest time.

Instructions for Dancing is a layered young adult novel from Nicola Yoon with the slightly bitter and cynical Evie at the centre. Burnt by her parent’s divorce, she has truly given up on love and any faith it promises. In a strange turn of events, she suddenly has the ability to see a couple’s future when she sees them kiss. Watching couple after couple break up, it reaffirms her distrust in love. Enter X, a boy she meets at a dance studio and suddenly everything she thought she knew is out the window – maybe he’s worth falling for?

“I don’t know why we lose the people we love and how we’re expected to go on after we lose them. But I know that to love is human. We can’t help ourselves. The philosopher-poets say love is the answer, but it’s more than that. Love is the question and the answer and the reason to ask in the first place. It’s everything. All of it.”

This book really feels like Yoon’s raw and unfiltered thoughts on love – both the good and the ugly. She’s a self confessed hopeless romantic (like me) but despite that, she knows the pain love can cause and she’s poured it all into Instructions for Dancing. Like any YA romance, it’s filled with cute, slushy, soft romance, but as with Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star, there’s also a profound commentary on the world we live in too.
9.1Beautiful, Raw, Unexpected