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Book Summary and Reviews of Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Instructions for Dancing

by Nicola Yoon

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2021, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

#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?

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"With deadpan humor, realistically wrought relationships among the Black principal cast, and a well-executed fantastical element, Yoon delivers a story of love's unpredictability and the importance of perspective that unfolds with ease and heart." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[A] richly textured novel featuring clever dialogue and expert pacing...it includes diverse secondary characters who are interesting and fully realized. The elements of fabulism deliver an unexpected twist, presenting the question of whether love is worth the pain of loss. A remarkable, irresistible love story that will linger long after readers turn the final page." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An endearing, affecting exploration of the journey of love. Everything Yoon touches turns to gold and this cinematic supernatural romance will be no exception." - Booklist (starred review)

"Yoon delivers this captivating story of first love with beautiful prose, clever dialogue that swings between laugh-out-loud funny and wildly insightful, clear respect for the complexity and nuance of her teen characters' perspectives and emotions—and just enough magic to make it all truly unforgettable." - BookPage (starred review)

This information about Instructions for Dancing was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Nicola Yoon Author Biography

Photo: Sonya Sones

Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Instructions for Dancing; Everything, Everything; and The Sun Is Also a Star, and is a coauthor of Blackout. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Award recipient, a Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Award winner and the first Black woman to hit #1 on the New York Times Young Adult best-seller list. Two of her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She's also the copublisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.

Link to Nicola Yoon's Website

Other books by Nicola Yoon at BookBrowse
  • The Sun Is Also a Star jacket
  • One of Our Kind jacket
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