Put on your dancing shoes! The second in Alexis Daria’s Dance Off series is here. It’s no secret that I absolutely loved the first book in this series, and I’m happy to report that once it hits it stride, Dance With Me is just as satisfyingly sexy.
This is the story of dancer Natasha Diaz, who is a dancer on the hit reality TV show The Dance Off. The book starts immediately after the series wraps for the season, and Natasha has had a run of bad luck. Her apartment gets flooded and she has to move out, but financial difficulties mean that she can’t afford to just move into a new apartment. The person who comes to her rescue is a Dance Off judge and semi-regular fuck buddy, Dimitri Kovalenko, who tells Natasha she can have his guest room until her apartment is fixed. Natasha agrees, but with a firm “no sex” stipulation.
It feels like I’m familiar with pretty much every romance trope under the sun, and I’ve definitely read “hook-ups that turn into long-lasting relationships” books before. But usually, the booty call portion of the relationship is brief; but in this case, Natasha and Dimitri had been occasional fuck buddies for three years! I’ll admit that this book got off to a bit of a slow start for me. With the preliminaries of the relationship already in the past, it was harder to fire up that dramatic tension. There’s maybe a few too many chapters that end with either Dimitri or Natasha thinking about how they aren’t going to make the same mistakes, fail again, or risk their hearts. Natasha’s “no sex” rule sort of makes sense, but at the same time felt like a ploy to keep them apart and the sexual tension rising.
Even though it takes a while to heat up, I loved the interplay between Dimitri and Natasha. Dimitri is famous and successful, but he’s still afraid to risk himself professionally and personally. Part of the reason he’s relegated Natasha to a booty call, even though he’s sure she’s “the one”, is that he’s afraid she’ll reject him. And Natasha focuses only on her failures, which means she feels unworthy of love. Alexis Daria does an amazing job of showing how these two gradually let down their guard and learn to trust each other.
There are so many pleasing, beautiful things about this book. In a series, I’m always wary of that same-same feeling. I semi-expected that this book would, like Take the Lead, be set against the background of the reality show being filmed. But this book is a fresh, creative original. It takes place during the off-season with Natasha hustling to make ends meet and Dimitri contemplating his dream of producing his own, original work. Yes, it’s an absolutely sizzling romance! But, at heart, it’s a book that explores creativity as a vibrant, personal, and urgent human activity. Natasha and Dimitri are both connected to the show, but they each have individual hopes and dreams. Loving themselves and and each other is inextricably tied to that deep well of creative energy that they both possess. The glorious thing about their romance is that being together makes them more creative, more capable, and more confident. And isn’t that just how love is supposed to be?
Dance With Me is another great book from Alexis Daria. You’ll fall in love with Dimitri and Natasha, and like me, you’ll be fervently hoping that there are more books coming soon from this talented author.

This was an enjoyable novel with some problematic parts, but I actually think I enjoyed the pacing of it more than I did the first one in this series. This is probably more to do with the fact that there was almost none of the reality TV show aspect, excepting when it was mentioned, and there was a vast reduction to the character of Donna (although she gets her comeuppance which I would almost give 5 stars for all on its own).

Natasha and Dimitri are both characters who readers will be familiar with from Take the Lead. However, if you didn't read that book, the author gives more than enough information for you to go forth into this book without problems.

Natasha is in a bad way when the story starts. Her housemate has just moved out. Her car has recently broken down and depleted her savings, and to top it all off, her bathroom ceiling has just fallen into her apartment necessitating her immediate leaving of the apartment so that the builders can do their repairing thing.

The problem is, she has nowhere to go and no money to get into a hotel.

Enter Dimitri, the guy she's been sleeping with casually for three years. I really loved the introduction of Dimitri. Like in Take the Lead, this is a dual viewpoint book, which meant that we got Dimitri's history of events between them as well as Natasha's. And Dimitri has just been looking for a way to see if there is any way of developing a closer relationship with this person who he's been casually seeing for three years.

All of this is going along swimmingly, if you excuse the complete lack of communication between these characters, but reasons were given to a point where even I excused it.

Around halfway through the novel, however, Natasha injures herself. And that's where some of the problematic stuff starts. Dimitri's wanting to develop a closer relationship with her becomes a little off. He does things for her without asking her permission or getting her consent. You can see that it's meant to come from a good place, but Natasha should also get a say in what's going on while she's injured.

THANKFULLY, both Dimitri's mother and his cousin set him straight on maybe showing he loves her rather than railroading through her wants in his need to assert his feelings, and he gradually does better.

Alexis Daria's second novel is another fun look inside the world of televised dance competition. Natasha, the best friend of the heroine in Take the Lead, is the star here. Tasha has had an on again/off again "friends with benefits" arrangement with Dimitri, one of the judges on the show. Deciding she needs to stand on her own feet, Tasha tries to end it with Dimitri, just as her apartment becomes unlivable and Dimitri's offer to put her up is the best of a bad bunch of options. To successfully pursue Tasha, Dimitri has to learn to let her solve her own problems. In turn, Tasha needs to learn to learn the difference between independence and trying to prove herself to her forbidding, dismissive mother.

In some ways, I don't want to compare the two books--they definitely stand on their own--but having read Take the Lead, comparisons are almost inevitable. The conflict in this was mostly driven by the personalities of the protagonists (whereas in the first book, the conflict was driven more by outside circumstances). I kind of wanted to shake both of them at various points, but their insecurities and histories were believable enough that the conflict wouldn't have been resolved by just one simple conversation. While the show was still a part of the plot, it wasn't as integral as it was in the first book (neither good nor bad, just an observation). The community and camaraderie among the show's other dancers is fun and strong in both books and I'm hoping we get more stories in this world (Kevin, maybe?).

I was provided a free advance reader's copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Take the Lead, the first book in this duology, focuses more heavily on a Dancing with the Stars-inspired plot between a dancer and a guest competitor. In Dance with Me, Daria explores the on-again-off-again relationship between a dancer and a judge, but it deviates pretty considerably from the first book.

I loved this book because it explores the family you find, the maturity of a regular hook-up to a relationship, and what it means to care for others. It's also ultra steamy, so if that's something you like in romance novels, definitely pick it up. Daria is also very skilled at navigating tough subjects like making difficult decisions to achieve one's dreams, fear of failure, and – oddly enough – personal finance. Both Natasha and Dimitri are likable in different ways, even as they err, and I found myself rooting for them.

Daria is a fresh new voice in romance, and I can't wait to see what she writes next.

Dance with me by Alexis Daria a sublime four-star read. This is the second book in the Dance Off series, and it’s just as good if not better that the first book. This book will have you dancing in the supermarket isles, it’s a great story and shows us what happens during the off season of reality TV shows, its shows how life isn’t all sparkles and bedazzled leotards. Natasha Diaz is having a hard time, her life isn’t what she was hoping and she has realised that when life gives you lemons you move in with a boy you can’t keep your hands off. That boy is Dimitri and well I wouldn’t want to keep my hands off him either. He could show me his moves any time, but that may be the problem.
This book will keep you reading and humming to yourself while you read it, if it doesn’t fill you with a passion for dancing I don’t know what will. If you are after a great read, with romance and drama a plenty then this is the read for you.

I enjoyed this Dance Off novel even better than the first, as Natasha and Dmitri's relationship got to the depths of who they are intrinsically and why they complement each other extremely well!

Dance With Me, shows us what some characters have to do while not taping the show to make ends meet. I am one of the people that think "they're a celebrity, they must be rolling in the money." Well Natasha surely isn't. Good thing for her that Dimitri is so patient. Because she is one stubborn woman.