Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

 Lynnie

contemporary fiction

 

I am a long-time reader of Rainbow Rowell and generally love her writing and her quirky characters. Slow Dance was challenging for me at times, but let's start with the good stuff. Past reviews of her work have included Scattered Showers, her run of the Marvel Runaways comics, and, before the blog, Attachments and Landline which I loved.

I really enjoyed the story itself of high school best friends who were obviously in love with one another but didn't have the mental load or maturity to act on those feelings. While there are no secret surprises and the ending is obvious from the beginning it's enjoyable to see how the characters get themselves from those early days of high school to their happily every after in their thirties. Some of the characters are wonderful, particularly the third best friend, Mikey, who deserves some sort of Nobel prize of friendship for putting up with Cary, Shiloh, and their array of bizarre behaviors with patience, kindness, understanding, and love. Mikey is friendship personified.

Cary and Shiloh each bring plenty of baggage into the relationship which keep them from one another at various times. Much of that baggage is realistic, but just as much of it is manufactured. Cary joined the Navy right out of high school and Shiloh went to college in another state, and they never figured out how to communicate with one another. The book alternates between current events and "before" and are presented from the viewpoints of all the various characters at different points.

Now for the bad and why I can't give this book more than 3 stars. Oh my word was Shiloh a challenging character to like. Rowell often writes characters who are quirky or on the spectrum without making a big deal out of it, but Shiloh's quirks or tics were often violent and borderline abusive, quite frankly. She was irrational, incredibly self-centered, and, I suspect, would seriously benefit from some therapy. It was painful to read how she treated others and more painful to watch everyone - particularly Cary - just indulge this behavior. She did seem to grow out of some of them, sort of, but you can love and accept people for who they are while also not allowing them to hurt you. I also was infuriated by both Cary's and Shiloh's inability to just talk to one another. I've never seen "best friends" who lack the ability to communicate with one another.  

Second, if you are going to write a character who is in the Navy, for the love of stories, PLEASE talk to someone who is IN the Navy and have them check your work. I spent 30 years as a Navy spouse and still work in that community and I never got angrier at this book than I did at the glaring inaccuracies about Navy life - particularly the stupid ones that could be easily checked. For example, she has the main character, Cary, who is supposed to be a lieutenant commander wearing his summer whites but describes his cover as a chief's cover (with an anchor), not an officer's cover (with an eagle, shield, and two crossed anchors). I mean, you can Google that. And yes, it ABSOLUTELY matters. She also spends half a page talking about how much Shiloh doesn't want to be a Navy wife because Navy wives... write blogs and she doesn't like their "vibe." A fictional character doesn't like the "vibe" of a group of people who support and love the men and women of our armed forces? Thanks. (Pro tip- Navy spouses have book clubs and read a lot. It may not be a great idea, as an author, to talk about how lame you think they are.) Also, Cary is on a destroyer - he would never say he is on a boat. A destroyer is a "ship," submarines are "boats." There's more, I won't bother to point out because it clearly doesn't matter to Rowell or the editorial team. I mean, I was willing to just note it to myself and overlook a lot until I got to the uniform bit & laughed out loud - and not in a good way - particularly because it was followed up by the part about how miserable military spouses are. It got a lot harder to feel much empathy for Shiloh (or Rowell) after that point.

So I will say, if you like a slow building awkward romance, you'll enjoy Slow Dance. If you have spent time in or around the Navy, you will find lots of lazy writing to annoy you (though can we hope that will be corrected prior to publication?). Don't say I didn't warn you.

Slow Dance is scheduled to be published July 23, 2024.

Thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for the Advance Reader Copy.