Five Steps Back

About this book

Three months before Nationals, the six best dancers at Oakhaven Academy in Savannah, Georgia stopped speaking to each other. Everybody agrees on the headline: at the winter showcase after-party, seventeen-year-old Maya Okonkwo kissed her partner's boyfriend. Nobody agrees on anything else. Now the partnerships have been torn apart and reassembled. Maya has been reassigned to Theo Park, a quiet Korean-American transfer who dances like he's apologizing for taking up room, and whose steadiness terrifies her more than any lift. Rishi Sharma, the golden-boy captain, has lost his partner, his ankle, and his nerve, and can't stop watching his ex, sharp-tongued Sofia Reyes, catch fire with the company's newest addition: Simone DuBois, who buried a competitive past under three years of theater crew work and swore she'd never stand on a floor again. And Jude Alvarado, the team's unshakable base, is keeping a secret in Charleston that could cost all six of them their eligibility. Told in a non-linear weave that braids the explosive week of the showcase, the long thaw of the months after, and the five brutal rounds of championship weekend, each chapter shifts third-person-limited focus among the six. Their memories of the same hallway, the same rehearsal fight, the same almost-kiss in a dark studio refuse to line up—and as the pieces slide into place, the question stops being who kissed whom and becomes who was actually betrayed. At Nationals, partnerships must be declared in writing and locked. Choosing who you stand beside on the floor means choosing who you stand beside afterward. Six dancers, five rounds, and one thing none of them can choreograph around: whether you can dance your way back to someone you already left.

Book details

Genres:

Young Adult, Contemporary Romance, Ensemble Sports Drama, Non-linear Literary YA

Language:

en

Published:

2026-08-03

Content rating:

PG