Slow Dance
Shiloh and Cary were best friends at their small Nebraska high school in the nineties, and everyone who watched them, including the two of them, knew they were going to end up together. They did not. More than twenty years later, Shiloh is newly divorced with two kids and a house she can barely keep heat in, Cary has just left the Navy and is back in town for a cousin's wedding, and the slow work of being in the same room again is happening against the wishes of both of their ordinary, tired lives. Rainbow Rowell's 2024 novel is a quiet adult romance about second chances that is honest about money, co-parenting, and the difference between the love you are old enough to make work and the love you thought you were supposed to have at seventeen.
What you might want to know about Slow Dance
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Shiloh and Cary were inseparable in high school, then weren't. Fourteen years later they meet again at a friend's wedding in Omaha, both divorced, both single parents, both still half in love.
The most commonly searched is Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell (2024), her first adult novel after a long YA career. It follows a couple reconnecting at a wedding 14 years after their last date.
Slow Dance contains some on-page content, around 3 out of 5 on the spice scale. Rainbow Rowell's first adult novel is more open about sexuality than her YA but stays in literary-romance territory.
Slow Dance contains some on-page content, around 3 out of 5 on the spice scale. Rainbow Rowell's first adult novel is more open about sexuality than her YA but stays in literary-romance territory.
Slow Dance is 300 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Slow Dance takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Slow Dance is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
Slow Dance is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
