Queenie is proof that if I procrastinate reading something long enough, it almost always turns out to be a favourite and then I spend months internally yelling at myself for taking SO DAMN LONG to read the good book. Someone should really start yelling at me.


Queenie
by Candice Carty-Williams

Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her..


Oh, Queenie. This book was *chefs kiss* and I'm officially in love. Quick! Quick! Someone hack my Facebook (yes, I lost the password again) and change my status to 'in-a-relationship-with-this-book' because the obsession is real. The last time I procrastinated a book, and ended up loving it so much, was Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. (Yes, neither book are similar in ANY WAY except the fact that they are ink printed on paper, BUT. LIKE.)

And I accidentally went through a lot of page tabs with this story.

In short? It was basically perfection. If you are constantly looking for emotionally complex, achingly realistic novels then Queenie is a definite must-read. Every single moment of this book, I could feel my heart beating and my head nodding in acknowledgement. This is the type of story I love: the kind that doesn't mess with your head, per se, but burrows into every fiber of your being and allows its prose to hum against your own heartbeat.

When I say that I could feel every pulse of Queenie, I do mean that literally.

Queenie is the sort of book that serenades readers, and sears itself into their memories. You're aware, suddenly, of your surroundings, yet somehow it's like you've drifted into another place entirely. It will surprise you and connect with something in the mind, heart, and soul, of every young woman.

I'm still kicking myself over not having read this sooner. The truth is, my time for Queenie was never meant to hit at any point other than now.In terms of connectivity, I think I'd compare it to my love of Don't You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane.

Both stories just hit me like a ton of bricks and came into my life at exactly the most pivotal moment possible. But, make no mistake: Queenie just is Queenie and that's what makes it all the more timely, enjoyable and easy to connect with. Candice Carty-Williams has officially made herself known in my heart, and my fingertips are positively electric over getting my hands on anything she releases in the future.