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A review by elenajohansen
Stay My Fantasy by Alisha Rai
4.0
A satisfying payoff to the first novella, though I was surprised how much longer and meatier this one was. If you view the two of them together as a single work, it's about 300 pages, of which the first hundred is the first novella and the rest the second. So Be My Fantasy was effectively Act I of the story, giving us a good point to stick the "will they or won't they work out" cliffhanger.
One aspect I think was stronger here was the fact that this is a second-chance romance, which I feel was skated over in the first novella. It's maybe not as strong a use of the trope as I've seen elsewhere--these aren't childhood or high-school sweethearts reuniting, merely two people who dated briefly (and chastely) as adults trying again under different circumstances. But that's addressed as a corollary to the conflict of Luca and Elizabeth dating the first time as, essentially, a business merger, and how she is no longer willing to settle for that. Luca's aim now has to be to convince her he no longer wants that, and I think that's a powerful and appropriate motivation for his actions.
He continues to be a charmer, and I may have fallen a little in love with him myself. The dinner scene with his parents blindsided me with their charm as well, so I see why it was an effective tactic on Elizabeth.
I think I still prefer Rai's more recent works, as Girl Gone Viral was one of my best books of 2020, but her back catalog is proving to be worth the time to investigate, and there's still more I have to get to while I'm waiting for the next Modern Love book.
One aspect I think was stronger here was the fact that this is a second-chance romance, which I feel was skated over in the first novella. It's maybe not as strong a use of the trope as I've seen elsewhere--these aren't childhood or high-school sweethearts reuniting, merely two people who dated briefly (and chastely) as adults trying again under different circumstances. But that's addressed as a corollary to the conflict of Luca and Elizabeth dating the first time as, essentially, a business merger, and how she is no longer willing to settle for that. Luca's aim now has to be to convince her he no longer wants that, and I think that's a powerful and appropriate motivation for his actions.
He continues to be a charmer, and I may have fallen a little in love with him myself. The dinner scene with his parents blindsided me with their charm as well, so I see why it was an effective tactic on Elizabeth.
I think I still prefer Rai's more recent works, as Girl Gone Viral was one of my best books of 2020, but her back catalog is proving to be worth the time to investigate, and there's still more I have to get to while I'm waiting for the next Modern Love book.