#TheUltimateBlogTour | #BookReview of Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Hey guys,

Today I’ll be reviewing a YA novel that stole my heart and threw me off balance through the course of its 304 pages.

This blog tour is hosted by TheWriteReads Tours in association with Penguin. You can check out the schedule for the tour here.

So, let’s get this blog tour started!

About the Book

Title: Instructions for Dancing • By: Nicola Yoon

Published by: Penguin • On: 03.06.2021

Pace: Fast • Pages: 304 • Age: 12 and above

Standalone • Genre: Young Adult Romance (contemporary) • Rating: 4

Song: Fallin’ by Alicia Keys

Buy Book: INDIEBOUND • BOOKSHOP • Barnes and Noble • Amazon

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun is Also a Star Nicola Yoon is back with a new and utterly unique romance.

Evie is disillusioned about love ever since her dad left her mum for another woman – she’s even throwing out her beloved romance novel collection.

When she’s given a copy of a book called Instructions for Dancing, and follows a note inside to a dilapidated dance studio, she discovers she has a strange and unwelcome gift. When a couple kisses in front of her, she can see their whole relationship play out – from the moment they first catch each other’s eye to the last bitter moments of their break-up.

For Evie, it confirms everything she thinks she knows about love – that it doesn’t last.

But at the dance studio she meets X – tall, dreadlocked, fascinating – and they start to learn to dance, together. Can X help break the spell that Evie is under? Can he change Evie’s mind about love?

Praise for Nicola Yoon:

‘Gorgeous and lyrical’ New York Times

‘Powerful, lovely, heart-wrenching’ Jennifer Niven

‘This extraordinary first novel about love so strong it might kill us is too good to feel like a debut’ Jodi Picoult

ADD TO GOODREADS

I received an eARC of this book from Penguin courtesy of NetGalley and TheWriteReads Tours. Thanks for the eARC! All thoughts and ideas expressed here are my own.

You can check out the schedule or search for #TheUltimateBlogTour of this book on Twitter to read more reviews and other exciting posts.

Rep: Jamaican American (mc), Biracial (sc), Queer friends, Eastern European (sc)

• Heartbreak= love+time.

Evie stopped believing in love after her parents got separated. She was an avid romance reader, so this was a huge change for her, which was a result of her parents divorce. After seeing her parents separated, she lost all interest in love or anything to do with love. She decided to donate her favorite romance novels to a local library box. When she’s done giving the books and turns to go back home, she is stopped by an old woman, came out of nowhere, asking her to take a book. You see, if you leave a book in this box, you’re supposed to take one. Evie obviously has zero interest to pick one, but she takes Instructions for Dancing with her and pedals away.

This book makes her meet new people, fall in love, experience heartbreak and ultimately helps her find herself again.

My heart will never be the same after having read this story. After being completely torn to pieces and then put together again by Evie and X’s story, I don’t think my heart can take this much of emotions in one shot.

This is my first Nicola Yoon’s book. I’ve heard about her books beforw but haven’t read it yet. But after this book, I want to read more heartbreaking stories like this one. Because I’m a sucker for tragedies.

Evie’s growth from the beginning to the last chapter was beautifully written. It was a path filled with hate, loss, hurt, betrayal, scepticism and doubt. She outgrows them all and transforms into someone who is far more lovable in the end.

Seeing her learn bachata, waltz, tango, and salsa with X, short for Xavier, was highly entertaining. I picked this book because of the dance part. It was not the focus throughout, but it does play a vital role. Dancing and growing out of her fears, helped Evie to find love, once again, in life.

• Visions

It’s always never a good thing when you get to see the future. You might think you’ll be prepared if you know what’s coming next, but you’ll never be prepared for that and it might become a self fulfilling prophecy too. The visions here was a lesson to Evie. It took a long time for her to realize that part.

These visions would have been great if they had ended on a positive note but it always ended with a couple’s break up. It was a boon for her and she never wanted to see a couple kiss only to know the deadline of their relationship.

I never expected this story to have something magical in it, but the visions made them so. I was here waiting to see who was going to be on Evie’s watchlist of the day. Reading about all those couples, to know about how they found love and would drift away later, felt invasive, but it was a window to see how they all fell in love. Some part of me was expecting an explanation for these visions, but I came to the conclusion that it was put there in the book to serve a purpose. I would have loved the book more, if it uses this kept the visions in forefront instead of pushing it to the background.

• Everybody can dance.

Evie and X had chemistry. I noticed the spark from their first meeting, which was a very sweet meet-cute moment in fact.

She never had planned to enroll in for the dance lessons, but she wanted to try the go-with-the-flow thing, which her friend strongly advised her to do, and so she ends up taking bachata, salsa, tango and other dance classes with X.

Evie and X were paired together to participate in the dance competition that’d help attract more students and money to the studio, so grudgingly she accepts him as her dance partner.

Their instructor, Fiona, was the best! She was such a firecracker and never played a song for Evie and X until they earned it. She came up with so many creative ideas to bring them together and it actually worked!

• Love

Love is never without hurdles. It always comes with terms and conditions applied, but you get through it. It’s always interesting to see how people find love when they least expected it. Reading about Evie’s journey to love her family, friends and give romance anoter shot, was heartbreakingly satisfying. It wasn’t easy for her to talk to her dad again, but the growth she showed, later in the novel, made me like her more.

Her visions always showed her heartbreaks or rather she focused on them. But it took her long to understand that time will heal broken hearts and people move on. Life goes on and people will find love again, that’salways how life is. Though she had to learn it the hard way, she lets herself to hope and believe in the people she loves.

X was cool and fun. He was a live-in-the-moment kinda guy. They’d bicker about anything and would challenge her and pretend that he doesn’t know to play billiards and lets her win. He treated everyone with respect and was a good listener.

Evie and X had chemistry, which I hardly find in books these days. He was the one who made Evie speak about her romance novels again. It was hilarious to see them exchange texts discussing on her favorite novels. He had a sad aura to him, despite his funny, optimistic self. After learning about his past, I understood why.

I also loved reading about Evie’s family. Evie was never the same after her parents divorce. She was broken, lost and felt detached in the early chapters of the book because of that. She knew why her parents actually got divorced and hated her father for that. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that the one person whom she trusted and loved the most, crushed her heart into pieces.

It took a lot time for her to speak to her dad, but she does gives him a chance. There was this one scene, where she thought she was okay seeing her father move on, but she breaks down completely and shuts herself in the bathroom. That scene the most vulnerable I’ve seen in the book and I wanted to give her space, even though it was just a book. That’s how real that scene was and it was too raw.

Evie’s friends have to be mentioned here. Martin was a 70 year old soul in a teenage body. He was the sweetest person to inhabit the earth, after X. Without his advise, Evie wouldn’t have went to the dance studio in the first place. This book was also testament that a girl could be just friends with a guy who wasn’t gay.

Cassidy and Sophie were the dramatic lot of their group. It was so hilarious to read their group texts. Cassidy would only reply in acronyms and Martin had to read it five times before deciding what the text actually meant.

This group was a refuge for Evie. She always had the gang to help her. This changed in the second half, which I’m not going to delve deep into it, because spoilers. But Otherwise, they were cool people to hang out with.

• Overall

Instructions for Dancing was every bit magical and heartachingly good. I’ve always loved stories that are sad and tragic and this one goes right into that list. It put me through so many emotions, I needed some time to collect myself after finishing it. I loved Evie’s character development and her bond with her friends and family. It was not easy for her to trust someone completely, but she does learn to let go and live in the moment, by the end of the book.

There were some issues with the plot. Some scenes went in a blur or were pushed to the background. Other than that this was an amazing book.

I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves a fast-paced romance that has a sweet cast, MCs with great chemistry, with a little bit of salsa and tango in it clubbed with magic, then you’ll be glad to have read this one.

Happiness is tricky. Sometimes you have to fight for it. Sometimes, though— the best times— it sneaks up behind you, wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you close.

TW // Loss of a loved one, Grief, Cheating

About the Author

Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Instructions for Dancing, Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner. Two of her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She’s also co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.

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