Book Club Questions for Instructions for Dancing

3 hours ago
4 min read

Evie Thomas doesn't believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually.

As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything--including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he's only just met.

Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it's that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love. In the end, is love worth the risk?

Quick Review of Instructions for Dancing

I love a good magical realism story, and this YA romance does a great job incorporating elements of the genre. The story is the definition of bittersweet—Evie is going through so much with her family, her friends, and her own romance. It had me feeling the feels all the way to the end.

Alert! Intriguing Discussion Ahead

I encourage book clubs to move beyond questions like, “What did you like/dislike about the book?” and “Who was your favorite character and why?” My discussion questions typically focus on ethical and moral dilemmas, book scenarios applied to real life, and character motivations.

Book Club Questions

At her mother’s request, Evie keeps her father’s affair a secret from her sister. What are the pros and cons of keeping such a secret—for each of the family members? Do you agree with Evie when she thinks, “Isn’t it always better to know the truth?”
X professes a “just say yes/live every day like it’s your last” philosophy to life, which he says is freeing. Evie claims that if people really lived like that, “they would indulge all their worst impulses.” Who do you agree with and why?
Fifi makes Evie and X dance for tips on the pier. Would you agree to do this? How did Evie and X benefit from being in an uncomfortable situation with (small but) real consequences for failure?
Evie thinks that “falling in love requires a leap of faith. But people only jump because they don’t know what the ground looks like.” Do you think she’s right, or is it possible to jump with your eyes fully open?
Evie avoids Sophie and Cassidy after she sees them kiss because she knows their eventual breakup will ruin their friend group. X tells Evie that even if that happens, she shouldn’t miss the time she has with them right now. Have you ever had a friendship end unexpectedly? If you knew it were going to happen, would that change how you saw the friendship today? What can you do to better appreciate a current friendship?
As Evie watches relationships around her form and break (her dad and her mom, her dad and Shirley, Cassidy and Sophie), she wonders if it’s worth getting into relationships at all. Martin, X, and Evie’s mom all advise her on this. What would you tell her? How have you handled relationships (romantic or otherwise) that have ended? Is what you’ve taken away worth more than what you lost?
When Evie catches her father cheating on her mother, she feels like he betrayed her idea of who he was. Throughout the book, she struggles to reconcile her past view of her father with her present one. She also struggles to reconcile her negative view of Shirley with the loving view Shirley’s friends and family have of her. Have you ever experienced similar dissonance in your experience with someone?
After seeing a vision of Archibald and Maggie’s relationship, Evie posits that “the whole point of love is to make more of itself.” How would you define the whole point of love?
Evie’s magical visions were only a curse because she focused on the ends of the relationships. If you had her visions, which part of them would you focus on? Even without her visions, how can you see love in real life?
Bonus: Play a round of Evie and her friends’ Tipsy Philosophicals game with your book club (no alcohol needed to have fun!).

Below, you can download a PDF of the Instructions for Dancing discussion questions to print out and bring to your book club. I hope you have an intriguing discussion!

If you enjoyed these book club questions for Instructions for Dancing, check out the discussion guide for Better Than The Movies, a YA romance featuring love lover Liz, who teams up with frenemy Wes to get the boy of her dreams to ask her to prom.