Such a sweet and fun book. Yoon tugs on your heartstrings, and it's been a while since I've read her earlier work, but this is such a lovely read that just wraps you in a hug.

This was adorable. It had its difficult, heartwrenching moments but it has a good message and you just felt better for reading it.


I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I love Nicole Yoon and this newest book didn’t disappoint. What a beautiful story about finding your way back to joy and love after life flips upside down.

From page one, I fell in love with this book. Evie experiences so much growth and I loved every page. Excellent and I will be recommending it to so many teens!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

my thoughts while reading:*
1: there are 60 chapters. 60. how
2: I’m hooked
10: “If he were furniture, he’d be a really nice looking shag carpet.” lmao this book is funny!
15: oooh that explains the title
30: I want a martin
45: alright alright alright, we’ve got a tall, newly-single hottie in a band.... sounds like a love interest to meeee
63: and the plot thickens! a dance contest!
72: he’s BLOCKING THE SUN FOR HER yeah ok I love x already
75: ha! this mini chapter is such a clever way to move the plot forward quickly!! now I see how there are 60 chapters
93: X GOT DEPTH. love an honest, upfront guy with a backstory
114: a beachside bonfire sounds incredible right now
120: YES GIRL, KISS YO MAN
127: noooooo! nooooo!!!!
160: thought there'd be more dancing
185: YES for realistic text convos
209: ok wait. how do they have time for 3 hour dance practices every morning when evie is in school?
210: ahh. they practice at night
237: UM OKAY NO ABSOLUTELY NOT THAT CANNOT BE A REAL FUTURE I AM CRYING THIS IS NOT ALRIGHT THIS CANT HAPPEN NO NO NO NO NO
262: graduations are so sad ugh
279: okay good ending 😭 be still my hopeless romantic heart
280: OKAY YEAH THAT WAS GOOD 😭 nicola yoon always delivers. I'm crying actual tears

overall: ok WOW this was good!! there was a surprising lot of depth and backstory. evie's "superpower" to see visions of people's relationships was creative, fun, and heartbreaking. x is the dreamiest dreamboat to ever exist. evie's relationships with her family melted my heart. and her friends! martin is a gem. ugh. wow this was really good... I just finished reading and am too emotional to write a legit review. please do yourself a favor and read instructions for dancing. you will absolutely not regret it!

*these page numbers are based on the advance readers copy edition.

I reviewed this book based on the author. I struggled with the book. (I don't know if my students would struggle.) I have found that sometimes WHEN you are reading is important. I couldn't connect to the characters or content. Honestly, I am even struggled with genre. This would be a book I would want a few of my students to read to see their thoughts.

I received a digital galley from Penguin Random House Intl to review.

Instructions for Dancing is a unique love story indeed. There's a lot of things to like about it apart from the swoon worthy romance as it also deeply tackles family and friendship relationships and reminds us of our capability to forgive. It has a solid representation for POC and LGBTQ characters and the cover is one of the most stunning ones I've seen so far. Yoon also indicated that she wrote this book during a pretty hard time in her life. I thank her for reminding me to live in the moment and cherish everything that I have. I'm rating this 5-star because I was left emotional especially at the end and I bet it's a feeling that'll cling to me for quite some time.

Wow...wow OKAY. I really want expecting this one to leave me like this???!!

Instructions for Dancing has a sweet and lovely vibe. It’s funny and cute and reminds me of an early 2000s movie.

X is probably the best teenager I’ve ever read. So mature and insightful for his 18 years. There was so much Evie had to learn and understand about living. So much for her to differentiate from her favorite romance books and the realities we are forced to face in our actual lives.

When I started reading this one I was expecting a light hearted lovely YA romcom. I mean look at that cover! Falling in love while learning to dance? And, yes I got that. But man oh man, I was not expecting that untraditional take to a happy ending.

Instructions for Dancing is full of heart and love and joy, but pain and sadness too. The importance of understanding how time we get with one another matters. How lucky we are to know and to love. And how we can’t focus on endings when there is so much light in between.

Gonna cry now.

When I first started this book, I was disappointed. It felt trite and not at all what I expected from Nicola Yoon. However, as I got a little further in, I realized the trope was exactly what she was going for in the introductory chapters and it worked perfectly.

Despite having a feel for how the story would go, there are still some significant surprises along the way, and I think this book does a wonderful job of allowing a reader to fall in love with the characters. The issues of love and loss are important ones for young people to wrestle with, and this book does a wonderful job of providing an opportunity for them to do just that!

Heartbreakingly beautiful. This is a must-read. It's a book all about love, growing up, and saying yes to experiences.

Thank you to NetGalley for exchange of this honest review. I don’t usually enjoy romance, but I love everything Nicola Yoon writes. I actually told patrons about this book before I could even get it in the library. She does teen romance with magical realism so well, I can’t keep her books on my library shelves! In this one, Evie sees the beginning, the kiss she is witnessing and the end of the relationship. It makes her afraid to take a chance on love and question why anyone would ever do that to themselves. But then, she meets X at a ballroom dance class, and she begins to realize that, even if it ends, falling in love and having time with that person is a pretty great experience too.

Nicola Yoon writes another great YA love story. After the heartbreak of 2020 it was just the book I needed to read. I only wish it was longer!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of “Instructions for Dancing” by Nicola Yoon. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book just spoke to my brain with the protagonist disillusioned by love stories. I loved Evie’s journey and I adored X so much. My one issue was I felt like sometimes the visions of people’s futures was forgotten by me while reading but it came back with a vengeance to set up the ending which was just... I can’t even. Like how dare you but bravo but still how DARE you??

I would definitely recommend this story even though my heart still has not recovered.

4/5 stars

Instructions for Dancing was a good book. It hit all the right notes: the intrigue of Evie’s “visions”, the awkward chemistry between Evie and X while learning to dance, and the boiled-down emotions that people go through when they process things that happen in their lives. That being said, I just didn’t connect with this book. I expected to feel a little more with the emotional cliffhanger at the end of the book, but it feels like the emphasis of the emotional connection was placed on Evie’s relationship with her family and her father instead. This left me feeling disconnected to the story . It was enjoyable but I probably wouldn’t read again.

This is the perfect book for romance novel enthusiasts; the main character, Evie, is one of us. Or, she used to be, before she stopped believing in love. After giving away her romance books, Evie gains the power to see a couples’ love story from the sweet beginning to tragic end. In an effort to learn how she got this strange gift of sight, she follows the trail to La Brea Dance Company. At the studio, Evie meets X, and through a twist of fate they enter into a ballroom dance competition, which means they have to get to know each other more. (Romance trope spotted: forced proximity alert!) As they get to know each other, they compare contrasting life philosophies and Evie gets a firsthand look at the difference between risking it all or playing it safe. When a choice comes up for Evie, she has to decide what her ability to see heartbreak before it happens really means.

The writing is phenomenal and the story is so unique! The love stories going on around Evie is a great addition to everything going on in her life, even as it all piles up in front of her. And her friend group has a great mix of personalities - I’m a sucker for good characters in a story and these ones all hooked me in. In addition to the writing, I really love that some chapters are interludes describing the best romance tropes, leading man characteristics, or best shifter romance groups. All in the main character’s voice, they not only help with characterization (and comparison to events in the story itself) but give the book a meta-feel that increases the fun as you wait for the ball to drop.

The romance between Evie and X builds up in the best possibly way - slowly at first and with plenty of banter, and then it reaches the moment that makes you squeal and smile. Opposites make some of the best pairings, and Evie and X are pretty different as far as characters go. However, they learn from each other (which is so cute), and when they dance together - wow. I also appreciate that their romance isn’t the only one in the novel! It’s a book about love, and the author really explores that in a variety of relationships and through a variety of windows (through Evie’s visions, through other characters, through side stories). Like all the greatest romances, this one breaks your heart and patches it back together again as you learn what it really means to love.

Nicola Yoon is so good at creating realistic romances that you can easily get invested in. In INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING we also get something of a supernatural bent to her usual realistic fiction YA romance, which is an interesting change of pace and a welcome one! I really liked Evie as our main character, as she has a fair amount of depth and complexity. She's snarky, funny, loving, but cautious, given that she's still processing her parents' divorce (as well as her father's infidelity, which she has had to keep secret from her sister). I loved seeing her journey from hopeless romantic to cynic, and then back to believing in love again, partially thanks to meeting X at a dance studio she stumbled upon after finding one of their books. I will say that the supernatural angle, in that Evie starts seeing visions of people's relationships when she sees people kiss, felt a little underused, until it was VERY much used (no spoilers as to what I mean by that). Once I got why it was a device, it made sense, but up until that moment late in the book the supernatural angle felt like a bit of an afterthought. I also felt like we really got to know Evie, but we didn't really get to know X as well as I would have liked (granted it's from Evie's POV, but I just felt like we didn't dive as deep as I wanted into X, even through her perspective).

All that said, I enjoyed INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING. It's lovely, bittersweet, and another enjoyable YA romance from Nicola Yoon!

4.5/5 stars

“This is not a love story.”

“Instructions for Dancing” is a YA contemporary with a hint of magic. It features Nicola Yoon’s brand of lyrical writing that I have come to absolutely love. Evie Thomas does not believe in love. Not after she witnesses her father’s infidelities, and he ultimately leaves her mother for another woman. She has given away all of her romance novels. Love is a lie and that is all there is to it. Right? One moment changes everything when Evie has a strange encounter that leaves her with an even stranger ability. She soon finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio where everything she has come to know is tested.
The characters in this novel were very dimensional. Evie is hurt. That hurt in and of itself pushes her to act and react in various ways throughout the story. I loved to see her transformation and growth. X was a breath of fresh air. Absolutely loved him. The entire cast of characters were fun and diverse. They were well needed and offered so much to the story. Although dancing is a big part of this book, it is not the main focus. I really enjoyed Evie’s lists throughout.
“Instructions for Dancing” gutted me. It was heartbreaking, humorous, sad, and heartwarming all at once. It has been a while since a book left me sobbing but this one definitely took me there . It is such a hard pill to swallow when you realize that those you have put onto a pedestal are not perfect. Acceptance, grief, and forgiveness are all part of the healing process. There were so many little messages throughout. Be unafraid. Take all the risks. You might fall, you might fly but either way, you will be okay.

Loved 'Instructions for Dancing'! Super cute YA novel with a more moving twist along the way. Highly recommend this one!

Freaking adorable. Following your twist of fate with a handful of independence made for a lovely combination. Just. Adorable.

First of all, thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for the advance copy of Instructions for Dancing! Evie has always loved love... that is until her parents divorced and she started keeping a secret from her sister. Now the last thing she is interested in, or believes in, is love. But when she stops at a Little Free Library to donate her romance novels, she gets "Zoltar-ed." Now, when she sees people kiss, she can see the beginning, middle, and, sadly, end of their relationship, which only serves to solidify her wariness about the whole concept of love. That is until she meets X.

I really enjoyed this outing from Nicola Yoon, whose books always serve to make me think and make me feel. The only thing really holding me back from five stars is that I don't know whether I love the ending or hate the ending. Regardless, I think this will be a solid choice for all of my students, grades 7-12, and will perhaps be a good Battle of the Books fit once it hits paperback.