This book is so sweet and so fun! Archer is a dancer who recently quit his day job on Ohio and moved to New York City to fulfill his dream of dancing on Broadway. He books a job for the summer dancing at an LGBTQ+ resort in the Catskills, alongside Mateo, a former Broadway leading man who has been lying low for 5 years. Their romance is slow burn and the cast of characters in this story is a real treat.

I work in theater and know too much about how productions work (even non-union dance revues) so some of those elements didn’t work as well for me personally. But as a huge fan of Dirty Dancing and theater gossip, it won me over where it counts.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Thank you to St Martin's Press for this eARC! As a very big lover of Dirty Dancing this was an absolute delight of a read. I want to see Archer and Mateo in their Latin night dance, because I can absolutely feel the heat from their eyes coming through the page. And Eileen my love I want to drink her tea and listen to her stories all day long. This was a nice balance of characters making mistakes and getting smacked by them and then doing the work to earn their way back from it. A really fun read for sure.

This book was good, but not great. I enjoyed it as a romance, but I had quite a few issues with it and several moments where I wanted to stop reading. First of all, I despise emotional cheating, and Archer's relationship with Caleb was *plagued* with it. Not to mention the actual cheating with everyone else. It felt like a confusingly messy and tangled web of gay cheaters, which isn't a great portrayal. Additionally, the side plot about the trans actor felt out of place and seemingly used the concept of transphobia to further the plot. I understand that romances usually like to wrap things up all nice and neat, but this book seemed to gloss over a lot of the side plots that I think could have been developed a lot further. I would have loved to see more of Archer, Mateo, and Eileen and how their relationship progresses. Additionally, I wish there was more time spent developing Betty as a character. Overall, this was a good and easy read, but not a phenomenal success.

I received an email from SMP offering this ARC to me and I couldn’t say no! This is the first book that I’ve read with dancing so I was pretty excited to read something new to me! I’m a huge Dirty Dancing fan so the title and cover really appealed to me! 😍

The characters in this book were just amazing and the chemistry was perfection. I’m a sucker for a good angsty slow burn and this book just checked all the boxes that I typically look for. This is my first book by this author and I’m really interested to read more!

Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC!

title: Flirty Dancing

author: Jennifer Moffatt

publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

publication date: May 27, 2025

pages: 336

peppers: 2 (on this scale)

warnings: drinking alcohol to excess, multiple partners, vomit, death parents (earlier)

summary: Archer has been striking out at dance auditions in NYC for long enough that he's thrilled to get a summer gig dancing at a LGBTQIA+ resort in the Catskills. When he arrives for rehearsal, he's shocked to find his teen crush Mateo, a dancer who was a big deal on Broadway until he got blacklisted for bad behavior. Turns out, Mateo is sort of hotter than ever and sort of a jerk.

tropes:

Dirty Dancing callbacks
forced proximity
another guy is interested
sort of his boss

what I liked: Archer and Mateo's hot dance scenes

what I didn’t like: Archer spends most of the story with Caleb, who's not very nice to Mateo.

overall rating: 4 (of 5 stars)

This was so messy and fun! Imagine if we saw the inner workings of the dance troupe at a summer retreat?? That’s this. The group of queer dancers gets SO MESSY. It was fun to read and will be a great summer addition to your summer TBR. Or request the ARC and take mental vacation now! Thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the ARC.

This is a really cute book about dancing and relationships. Archer and Lynn are roommates when Archer is accepted into a dancing troupe at Shady Queens Cabaret for the summer. He's delighted as he's never gotten a part he really wanted and this is an opportunity to learn from the best! And when he arrives he sees the famous Mateo who he's had a crush on since childhood so now he's really nervous. But soon he settles in and he flirts with Caleb and talks to Lynn who has dreams of her own. But as we know, things can change in a heartbeat...so be prepared!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

While this book sounded incredibly cute, It just didn't land for me personally. I dnf-ed around 50% in because it was becoming slightly corny and predictable.