A chunk of the chapters of Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance begin with the word “before.” Before, when they were high schoolers in Omaha, Nebraska, Cary and Shiloh were “odd couple” best friends. Quiet and focused, Cary was the straitlaced Navy ROTC kid. Shiloh was the theater nerd, the counterculture girl who could never sit still—but never quite knew where she wanted to go, either. And yet, they were inseparable. The kind of joined-at-the-hip friends who seemed destined to end up together, if they weren’t together already. But in the present day (read: 2006), they haven’t spoken in 14 years when Cary comes back to Omaha for a mutual friend’s wedding. Cary’s path led exactly where he expected: He’s now a Navy officer. Shiloh’s path led her somewhere she didn’t expect: She’s a divorcée with two kids, living in her mom’s rundown house. She and Cary have even less in common than they did before. The one thing that hasn’t changed is how much they love each other. The only difference is now, they might finally be ready to do something about it.
Rowell is the author of several beloved bestsellers for adults (Attachments) and teens (Eleanor & Park), and if I had to pick one word to describe her prose, it would be “sharp”: Every line is witty, insightful and uncompromising, with nothing airbrushed or glossed over. Shiloh and Cary’s lives, while often funny, are genuinely messy: not in a shallow, sitcom kind of way, but in a real, brutally honest way that makes the laugh catch in your throat. Because while both main characters are clever and funny, charming and appealing, the situations they’re in are also painfully relatable. They grapple with difficult family dynamics and deeply personal insecurities. Slow Dance isn’t just a story about two people who love each other. It’s about two people who like each other, who get each other and who come through for each other even when everything seems screwed up. It’s a romance that’s chaotic, fraught, emotionally charged—and beautifully real.
