Daisy dreams of opening a shop that caters to working class women's needs, so she enters a contest offering a cash prize for the best business proposal. It's an uphill battle because many people resent the idea of a woman opening a business.

Crash has been treated badly by society for most of his life, but he has a loving family that teaches him ways to ignore the cruelty and follow his dreams. His past business practices wouldn't be considered respectable, but now he is working towards opening a legitimate business.

Daisy and Crash were just beginning a relationship when misunderstandings and unkindness parted them. A few months later, Crash sees Daisy making her business proposal (and how cruelly people treat her). He offers to coach her on how to strengthen her presentation for the final round of the contest.

The cruelty that both main characters have to deal with on a regular basis is heartbreaking (sexism, racism, and classism). But even with all of the negativity, the book ends up being pretty sweet. ( )

This is probably my favorite novella by Courtney Milan. I'm generally not a fan of her novellas, as they tend to try to do too much with too little space, but this one had an appropriate scale to the number of pages. Crash (gosh, is that a horrible name) and Daisy are two people living on the rougher side of London, which rarely gets explored in historical romances unless there's a chase scene, a kidnapping, or one of the leads is a thief to be tamed by a marquess a la My Fair Lady. Daisy's goal is to win a competition and open her own store while battling her feelings for Crash. It's a second chance romance, which helps given the shortened format of the story. There's no rushing here, and the pace is just right.

Race and Sexism take center stage in this novella. It can seem a little preachy, at times, so if that isn't your thing, fair enough. Daisy is literally laughed off the stage when she tries to propose her business model to the judges despite having the better pitch compared to her male competitors. Crash is black and while he's super charming and confident as hell, all of the women are obsessed with him because he's black. Except for Daisy who learned the hard way not to focus on the fact that he's black. Crash uses his tricks to being debonair to help Daisy improve her speech to impress the judges.

Will Daisy miraculously win? Or will sexism prevail? The answer is pretty obvious, but it was still cute watching the two fall back in love. The message in this book is pretty solid and heart-warming. It reminds me very much of inspirational stories where the takeaway is more important than the narrative or the romance. There's the same emphasis on forgiveness and hard work and kindness. So, if you don't mind Christian or Inspirational novels where the message is "Have Faith in God", then you will enjoy this story with a message of "believe in yourself and don't apologize for it" (at least that's what I got from it).

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This took me 5 or 6 chapters to get into, but I ended up really enjoying it. It's kind of empowering actually. And happy. A second-chance trope with both characters growing, and a nice cast of supporting characters. ( )

What can you say? It's Courtney Milan. Once again, well-drawn characters, realistic conflict, working through a tough situation and ultimately triumphing. Then add in a POC hero (in a historical!) and some real discussion around sexism and racism within the context of the characters' experience that directly leads to their conflict. She's my favourite romance writer today. (Taking the baton from JAK, who is concentrating more on the mystery side of her writing.) ( )

I love Courtney Milan!!!! I adore every single character she has ever written, and Crash and Daisy are no exceptions. However, I think Daisy was hurt far worse by Crash than vice versa and should not have been the one to prostrate herself. She absolutely needed to own and apologize for her unconscious well-meaning-white-girl racism, but Crash was far more vicious and cruel and frankly, I think he should have had to work a bit harder to regain her trust. (4.5 stars) ( )