Karelia Stetz-Waters’ Satisfaction Guaranteed was one of my favourite books in 2021, so when I saw she had a new romance coming out this year, this time co-written with her life partner Fay Stetz-Waters, I immediately wanted to read it.

Second Night Stand is a sexy-sweet romance between two dancers competing on a reality show with a $1M cash prize. Lillian Jackson is a super talented ballet dancer and head of an all-Black ballet company. The company is losing their sponsorship, so she needs to win in order to keep the company going. Izzy “Blue Lenox” Wells is a curvy burlesque dancer who leads a group of gender-diverse and body-diverse performers. She’s purchased a fixer-upper theatre to use as a community gathering and performance space, and needs the cash prize to make necessary repairs.

The romance between Lillian and Izzy is sweet, and just as with Satisfaction Guaranteed, consent and mutual respect play prominent roles in their relationship. I like that they both shared a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of their respective chosen families, and how they both had to deal with complex relationships with their families of origin. And I especially like how their relationship with each other helped them learn valuable things about other aspects of their lives, and grow both as individuals and as a couple.

Where the book fell flat for me was in the set-up itself: the dance competition. I get a strong sense of why Lillian’s group is a contender at the competition, but I was never quite convinced about how Izzy’s group stayed on for so long. The depiction of their first performance was just messy. The whole point of their group is to provide a space to belong for all peoples, regardless of identities and performance interests, and while that’s a wonderful goal from a community-building aspect, it doesn’t make for a cohesive performance.

The book tries to explain this away by saying that the producers put them on as an amateur sacrificial lamb, so to speak, destined to be knocked off in the first round. Even Lillian, watching the group members perform one after the other, is certain that they’re about to be eliminated. The book, and Lillian, then try to make us believe that Izzy’s performance is so charismatic and captivating that she single-handedly convinces the audience to vote them in to stay. Unfortunately, as likeable as Izzy the person is, whatever magic she worked on-stage to get her group past Round One does not translate well on page. I was unconvinced, and the longer they stayed on, the more convenient it felt, as there was often one competitor or another who messed up so badly they had to be sent home. With a $1M prize at stake? Puh-lease.

I also tend to not be a huge fan of overly detailed descriptions, especially of background characters, so this is a rare instance when I actually wanted to see more of the dance competition. The front runner for the prize is a hip hop group that pretty much all the competitors agree is amazing and tough to beat, but we never actually get to see them dance. I don’t even remember meeting the dancers in this group at all, even though we meet a random assortment of other dancers. For a book centred on a dance competition, there isn’t much of it.

Speaking of competition, there’s also a chapter where the producers try to provoke Lillian, Izzy, and their dancers to trash talk each other, and both groups flat-out refuse to do so. Lillian and Izzy’s attempt quickly turns flirty, so the producer swaps them out with other performers on their respective teams, but then those performers seem incapable of doing anything but compliment each other. And I get it. Manufactured competition is silly, the producer was pushy, and kudos to the characters who refused to call their competitors the B-word, because it’s such a gendered insult.

But honestly, as over-the-top and sometimes mean as those scenes can sometimes play out, not engaging in it at all just feels very killjoy-ish. And however much the performers may respect their competitors’ talents, there is very little sense at all that any of them consider this competition important. Part of that is on Lillian and Izzy for not being open with their respective groups about their real motivations to win the competition. (It’s not just for funsies! It’s to save the ballet company / community theatre!) But even when the truth comes out, the competition takes second place to the characters’ morals and values. Which, okay, good for them. But if the characters themselves don’t care about winning the competition, how am I, as a reader, supposed to care about either of them winning? Despite the real futures at stake, the story takes a very gentle approach to the competition driving the story forward, and that in turn blunts much of what gives the story edge.

Overall, this is a sweet and feel-good romance, with lots of body positivity and love within found families. It’s a bit of a let-down for me after the brilliance that was Satisfaction Guaranteed, but it’s a good story nonetheless, and a fun way to spend a weekend.

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Thank you to Forever for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.