Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

Shiloh Butler was supposed to get out of north Omaha.

She used to sit out on the front porch with her best friend, Cary, and plot their escape. Shiloh was going to be an actress – she had a scholarship to a good school – and Cary was laser-focused on the Navy. Sharp, stoic, golden-eyed Cary . . . thin as a stick of gum and poor as dirt. He was probably the most decent person Shiloh has ever known. She hasn’t spoken to him in fourteen years.

When Shiloh gets an invitation to a high school friend’s wedding, Cary is the first and only thing on her mind.

She desperately wants to see him again, but she doesn’t know if she can bear being seen by him. What would Cary think of Shiloh at thirty-three? A divorced mom living in the same house she grew up in. Someone who works behind a desk, not onstage.

Would Cary even want to see Shiloh after all this time? After everything?

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

In her triumphant return to adult fiction, Rainbow Rowell has written a love story so honest and human – so cathartic – you’ll feel it in your bones. Slow Dance is a power ballad of a book, brimming with Rowell’s signature compassion and wit. It’s deeply affecting and profoundly romantic.