What the back says... 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?
Here go with another Ultimate Blog Tour from The Write Reads.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book, was I going to be sucked into a world of Strictly Ballroom? A run of the mill YA romance? High school love and broken hearts? I'm pleased to say I was very pleasantly surprised.
Instructions for Dancing follows Evie, a high school senior badly affected by the divorce of her parents. Having always thought her parents marriage was rock-solid, Evie is having a hard time reconciling what has happened and the thought of her father being in a relationship with a new woman. A once avid romance fiction reader, she can't bear to now read the books that used to bring her so much joy. Deciding to donate them to a local library she encounters a mystery woman who not only shares the book 'Instructions for Dancing' with her but also a very special gift.
Evie soon discovers that, when she sees a couple kiss, she can see their whole relationship as a vision. She sees the moment the couple meet, the interesting middle bit and then, ultimately, the breakdown and end of the relationship. Believing this has something to do with the book given to her, a search for the couple on the back of the book leads her to a local dancing school. It's here she not only discovers a love of dance but also a love of her own.
What follows next is a rollercoaster of emotions. First love, forgiveness, moving on and loss. It takes Evie a long time to realise that she doesn't have to focus on the end but enjoy and revel in the here and now.
It's no secret that I have been on a bit of a reading drought recently, I'd lost my love of reading but this book has cured that. I read this in one afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. I completely understood the feelings Evie was going through, the anger at her father, the struggle with forgiveness and moving on and then the thought of losing someone and hiding from love rather than embracing it. This is a very gentle, emotional read and a perfect mix of love story and fantasy. The fantasy part is almost not the most important part of the story - it's very much secondary to the rest of the plot and actually that makes the whole thing work really well.
Thank you again to The Write Reads for having me take part in this blog tour, I hope you all enjoy the book as much as I did.
I received this as a mobile publication in return for an honest review as part of The Write Reads Blog Tour.
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