Her Every Wish

Her Every Wish (2016) Courtney Milan

Set in England in 1866

This is a novella in the Worth Saga, and follows after Once Upon a Marquess.

Daisy Whitlaw is struggling to keep herself and her mother housed and fed. Everyone tells her to let her mother go, that she can’t support the two of them, but Daisy won’t abandon her mother, and so works hard enough for both of them.

Because she wants something more, she enters a contest for entrepreneurs–present a business proposition and the winner gets 50 pounds.

Crash is a man of color, although no one is quite sure who is father was or where he came from–they just know he was a sailor.

My grandmother was born a slave on the island of Tortola. She accompanied the trader who held her on his voyages as… never mind. One day, a mile from the shore of England, she jumped overboard.”

“Why?”

He managed a short, frowning glance. “Because slavery was not recognized in England,” he said shortly. “She couldn’t swim. She made it to shore anyway. At the time, she was pregnant with my aunt.”

Daisy looked up at him. “When people hear ‘dock whore,’ they imagine some poor specimen of a woman who wanders up and down the wharf, thinking of nothing but her next john. My grandmother took in laundry. She sewed. She did all these things for sailors, and one of them fell in love with her. How could he not?” He smiled. “The only people who called her a whore were ladies who had no other words for a poor woman with a prior bastard child. My grandfather was an Indian lascar who had been abandoned in London by a shipping company because he had injured his knee. No clergy would solemnify their marriage. It didn’t lessen the affection in it. The gentry saw her as nothing but a prostitute.

I started this book several times, and never got more than a few pages in, but after having reread Once upon a Marquess, decided to give it another try.

This story went all kinds of places I wasn’t expecting, from the contest to Crash’s proud acknowledgement.

I’m the scion of three generations of dock whores and sailors.

It’s marvelous and heart-breaking all at the same time.

I think what I liked best about this story was how Daisy ended up with her HEA–not just Crash, but her life on her own terms.
Rating: 7.5

Published by Courtney Milan

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