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Stay - Detailed Feedback

Intro:

Stay was written by lostlovefairy. It is a romance story taking place in college, and it follows main characters Fiza and Alan, two musicians who band together to form a talented duet; however, as their relationship becomes complicated and pressures from external forces begin to wear on their mental states, the duo face challenges they were not prepared for and must find a way to overcome them both individually and together.

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Detailed Feedback

What Worked:

Maybe I'm a little biased, but I enjoyed the setting and overall plot of the book. I'm a college kid nearing graduation, so seeing first-year students in a college environment was almost a bit nostalgic for me. Beyond my personal bias, the setting made it so the romance was more believable. That may sound like a strange thing to say, but college romances are very fun to watch unfold since you're really at a time of your life where you're developing into the person you're going to be. So not only are they developing a romance, but they're developing as people and learning what it means to be an adult.

Even outside the romance, the college environment is fun to read about and feels very real. You take the time to describe the campus, like saying it's noisy (chap 4), or giving specific names to things like the Community Center. I know this may sound like smaller details, but the smaller details matter, and there are countless authors who don't actually give any names or details to their locations. I value worldbuilding because too many writers on here will say "Oh let's go to xxxx cafe" instead of just naming a cafe. That small act of giving names to places and giving imagery by evoking the five senses makes the narrative that much more alive and it makes it stand out from most other books on this platform. I appreciate the attention to detail, especially since as a college kid myself, a lot of those details remind me of my school and help me imagine scenes better.

The struggles that come with Fiza's family that presses on her mind is intriguing to watch. She's under more pressure than most college kids are, and that makes me feel bad for her and want to see her succeed. Alan is another example of someone who has a lot on his mind and reacts to it in different ways than Fiza does. Having the two react to their situations differently not only makes them stand out more, but it makes them more realistic.

That leads me to my next point about realism. The characters are overall very realistic to how I'd imagine a real college kid to act. I've had many roommates, and many of them act the way Alan and Fiza do. I lived in the same room as someone who acts more like Alan, and it was interesting to see real life people I know reflected in these fictional characters. The smaller details I mentioned before lead to Alan in particular feeling very realistic.

Normally I get annoyed by the whole miscommunication thing and the main characters being more in a situationship than a relationship, but for a college setting, I wasn't bothered by it. That ties back into the realism where many many many people I know settle for situationships and don't want relationships, or they like like the person they're in a situationship with but don't want to go any further. There are a lot of complex emotions there, and I'll talk more about the emotions later, but in general, I liked how the setting of the book and the age of these characters allowed for the situations they're in to feel more realistic and fun to read about when I otherwise would be annoyed.

Skipping to later in the story, I think it ends well. This is coming from someone who writes sad endings for a living: I think the happy ending was deserved and felt well done. The pacing in the last chapter was pretty solid and I liked the way it wrapped up the story for the characters. It felt like a natural conclusion. Sometimes stories need happy endings, and I feel this needed a happy one, and I'm glad you gave it that.